10/6/2009
We work and live side by side with the people sharing our talents,
friendship and love. This pre-supposes an openness to the needs of
others and the humility to meet them wherever they are at. It calls
for a spirit of confidence and poverty which is ever ready to listen
and respond to others. This spirit of poverty makes itself available
as fertile ground open to whatever fruit the Lord wishes to plant. We
may never see the results of our work.
Spirit and Lifestyle
I have just had two weeks without email. It's amazing that something
that became part of my life less than 10 years ago has become so vital!
Reading this excerpt from Spirit and Lifestyle brings to mind an
email I received once I got back from the computer store this
morning. I met Joe three times - once in Nicaragua for the Witness
for Peace election observation delegation. The other two times were
in El Salvador where he spent almost a year planning the January 2009
and March 2009 election delegations. He rode in the back of the pick-
up to La Loma when I visited the community with CIS and Rainbow of
Hope for Children, one of the donor organizations.
Dear Friends,
I am writing to let you know that our good friend and fellow
elections coordinator, Joe DeRaymond passed away today. As many of
you knew, he was diagnosed with a grade 4 brain tumor in April of
2008. Since then, he has not given up his commitment to accompany
the struggle for peace and justice in El Salvador and elsewhere, and
continued to pursue his passion and live out his principles up until
the end of his time here on earth.
Joe has volunteered for the last four CIS election observer mission
(2003, 2004, 2006 and 2009) as a municipal coordinator, and has
visited El Salvador and the CIS almost every year since 1997, bearing
witness to the struggle of marginalized communities, writing
elections and human rights bulletins, and sharing El Salvador´s story
with anyone he encountered, thereby recruiting them to be involved in
la lucha. After the election observer mission of this year, Joe
returned to El Salvador for several weeks in August to study Spanish
and volunteer, and then made his way to Colombia with a FOR Human
Rights Delegation, accompanied by Don Adrian Martinez, the president
of La Loma community.
Two years ago, Joe was part of the Rutilio Grande 30 Year Anniversary
Delegation with the CIS, which was the first international delegation
to visit the La Loma Community in Comasagua, La Libertad. This was a
special delegation that set in motion a campaign to raise funds to
build a school in the community. Through the fundraising and
donations of this group, as well as contributions from Rainbow of
Hope Foundation in Canada and St. Ann Parish in Plattsburg, MO, the
CIS was able to build that school with the community and furnish it
with desks and other equipment. Joe had organized a good part of
that delegation, and returned to La Loma on many occasions, building
a special relationship with the community.
The school in La Loma is in many ways a tribute to Joe´s commitment.
Just this week, Don Adrian, the president of La Loma, Leslie, and
Maira Romero, one of the CIS promotors proposed to the Ministry of
Education that the school be named after Joe. Today, Leslie received
a call that the proposal had been approved. The school will be named
¨Centro Escolar Joseph DeRaymond.¨ She also received word two days
ago from Rainbow of Hope Foundation that they are willing to build
another classroom for the school! While we are all feeling Joe´s
loss profoundly, we are also blessed by this good news for the
community that he was so close to, and we can´t help but feel his
continuing presence and inspiration in our work.
Sarah Snider, who observed with us in March in Santa Ana, has been by
Joe´s side during this time, and could definitely use our love and
encouragement.
Please send any cards, flowers, fotos to:
Sarah Snider
349 Main Street
Freemansburg, PA 18017
For those still in El Salvador, we are working on planning a memorial
service for Joe in the next couple of weeks, as well as a naming
ceremony for the school in La Loma once the rainy season subsides and
the roads are passable. We will keep you up to date on these events.
If you are interested, you can read some of his writings on El
Salvador, Central America, and the U.S. and international peace
movement in the Lehigh Valley Independent Press at: http://
www.lvindependent.org/
Also, attached are some photos of the soon-to-be ¨Centro Escolar
Joseph DeRaymond¨ in La Loma.
Much love and solidarity,
Antonia
10/13/2009
If we truly follow the way of Christ, we will find the Cross as well
as the Resurrection. The Path of Jesus, which we freely choose to
follow, has no trace of glory or honor or pomp. It calls for a
confidence and faith beyond that.
Spirit and Lifestyle
Each week I marvel at the words from Spirit and Lifestyle on which we
are called to reflect.
Sunday's paper recalled two persons who turned Suffering into a Path
to Life.
Marek Edelman (1919 - 2009) was the last surviving leader of the
doomed Jewish revolt against the Nazis in Warsaw. He never did give
up. "We knew perfectly well that we had no chance of winning, " he
recalled. "We fought simply not to allow the Germans alone to pick
the time and place of our deaths.... Their death (the 300,000+ who
boarded the trains to Treblinka) was far more heroic. We didn't know
when we would take a bullet. They had to deal with certain death,
stripped naked in a gas chamber or standing at the edge of a mass
grave waiting for a bullet in the back of the head. It is an awesome
thing, when one is going so quietly to one's death. It was easier to
die fighting than in a gas chamber."
Edelman's suffering began as a child. Both his parents died when he
was young. He had no family. Warsaw was is city. He learned Polish,
Yiddish and German. "It was here that at school, I learned one must
always take care of others. It is also here that I was slapped in the
face just because I was a Jew."
He became one of Poland's leading heart doctors; experienced renewed
waves of anti-Semitism in Cold War Poland. Lost his job in 1968. Was
a member of the pro-democracy movement and of the banned trade union,
Solidarity, and was interned during the 1981 martial law and
participated in the negotiated end to communism in Poland in 1989. In
his 70s he launched a brief career in politics before returning to
his medical position.
His experiences left him with a grim view of humanity but he said:
"People have to be educated from childhood, from kindergarten, that
there should be no hatred."
The other is Mercedes Sosa (1935 - 2009), the Argentine folk singer
who gave voice to the voiceless. Here are the lyrics of We're Still
Singing, which she sang accompanied by the large Andean drum called
the bombo: "I was killed a thousand times. I disappeared a thousand
times, and here I am risen from the dead ... Here I am, out of the
ruins the dictatorship left behind. We're still singing." She sang
under the official harassment and intimidation by the right-wing
junta that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983. The government was
responsible for the deaths and disappearances of an estimated 30,000
real and perceived leftists. Sosa transformed her sold-out concerts
into rallies against the abuses of power and finally had to seek
exile in France.
"There are things in your mind, like colours and childhood attitudes,
and there is also the pain and the death you saw. You shouldn't deny
those things, because to do so can make you ill."
GRACIAS A LA VIDA!
Remember the percussionist I mentioned in the September 22 reflection
- the first person in musical history to successfully create and
sustain a full-time career as a solo percussionist. I was listening
to a concert taped in Vancouver on radio and soon realized it was the
same program as the Edmonton concert and I heard that the
percussionist is almost completely deaf and plays in bare feet to
"hear" the floor.
I leave you with a link to "A well-deserved Nobel Prize" by one of
our Canadian icons - also an Edmontonian - Douglas Roche:
http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/well+deserved+Nobel+Prize/2088884/
story.html
It's Thanksgiving today in Canada! Celebrate with us! You can never
be too thankful!
Cecily
10/20/2009
If we truly follow the way of Christ, we will find the Cross as well
as the Resurrection. The path of Jesus, which we freely choose to
follow, has no trace of glory or honor or pomp. It call for a
confidence and faith beyond that.
We are invited to be fully and actively involve in all areas of human
activity and development: education, medicine, agriculture, craftwork
and building. We are the carpenters, the catechists, the nurses, the
community builders, the doctors and the farmers. These are the skills
with which we have been blessed, the talents which we have received.
We are not to bury them, but to freely share them, so that people
might live with dignity and be helped to reach their full human
potential.
Spirit and Lifestyle
I did not forget that I used the first paragraph above last week. I
repeat it because it was in this Sunday's Gospel (Mark 10:35-45),
because I read this morning part of chapter 5 - Good Power and Bad
Power - in Richard Rohr's Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality,
but mainly because when reading ENVIO, Nicaragua's University of
Central America (UCA) (www.envio.org.ni) October issue, I found after
a long article on the coup in Honduras, a short article entitled
"Resistance with the Scent of a Woman" by Radio Progresso journalist
Alicia Reyes. I found it shocking that so much violence could be
directed against women just because they are women and they aren't
minding their business at home in the kitchen but demonstrating
peacefully for democracy.
I invite you to read the article for reflection this week:
www.envio.org.ni/articulo/4065
Cecily
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