"Photos of a Prophet" - a Romero retrospective and tribute

Andy, in the comments to the previous post, recommended this wonderful pdf-format slide show. It's actually a book available in exhibit form available in slide show form. The wonders of technology!

These are archival photos of Monseñor Romero and his people, from Romero's childhood to the days after his death. Well worth a look.

The exhibit is currently at Grace Cathedral, San Francisco. Information here.

Priests carry Archbishop Romero’s coffin out of the Metropolitam Cathedral of San Salvador, March 30, 1980. Photo: Private collection of the Photography Center of El Salvador

Oscar Arnulfo Romero, ¡Presente!

Today was the 30th anniversary of the martyrdom of Monseñor Romero, Archbishop of San Salvador.

I will post more when my teaching week is over, but for now, here are two links.

At this one, which is mostly in Spanish but has links to other languages, you will find a wealth of resources including a slide show in PowerPoint (click on "XXX Aniversario") with rich quotes by Romero and many other words and images to ponder.

This one is a biography in English by a U.S. poet and activist who has engaged in Central America solidarity work for many, many years and knows what she is talking about.

"A church that does not unite itself to the poor in order to denounce from the place of the poor the injustice committed against them is not truly the Church of Jesus Christ."*-San Oscar Romero de las Americas

¡Romero vive!

The Sermon to the Snakes

"What is the whole of our existence," said Father Damien, practicing his sermon from the new pulpit, "but the sound of an appalling love?"

The snakes slid quietly among the feet of the empty pews.

"What is the question we spend our entire lives asking? Our question is this: Are we loved? I don't mean by one another. Are we loved by the one who made us? Constantly, we look for evidence. In the gifts we are given--children, good weather, money, a happy marriage perhaps--we find assurance. In contrast, our pains, illnesses, the deaths of those we love, our poverty, our innocent misfortunes--those we take as signs that God has somehow turned away. But, my friends, what exactly is love here? How to define it? Does God's love work in our lives? Or is God's love, perhaps, something very different from what we think we know?

"Divine love may be so large it cannot see us.

"Or it may be so infinitely tiny that it works on a level where it directs us like an unknown substance buried in our blood.

"Or it may be transparent, an invisible screen, a filter through which we see and hear all that is created.

"Oh my friends..."

The snakes lifted their bullet-smooth heads, flickered their tongues to catch the vibrations of the sounds the being made somewhere before them.

"I am like you," said Father Damien to the snakes, "curious and small." He dropped his arms. "Like you, I poise alertly and open my senses to try to read the air, the clouds, the sun's slant, the little movements of the animals, all in the hope I will learn the secret of whether I am loved."

The snakes coiled and recoiled, curved over and underneath themselves.

"If I am loved," Father Damien went on, "it is a merciless and exacting love against which I have no defense. If I am not loved, then I am being pitilessly manipulated by a force I cannot withstand, either, and so it is all the same. I must do what I must do. Go in peace."

He lifted his hand, blessed the snakes, and then lay down full length in a pew and slept there for the rest of the afternoon.

Louise Erdrich

The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse

(c) 2001

2002 paperpack, HarperPerennial, pp. 226-227

With those for whom there is no room

Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for Him at all, Christ has come uninvited. But because He cannot be at home in it, because He is out of place in it, and yet must be in it, His place is with those others for whom there is no room. His place is with those who do not belong, who are rejected by power because they are regarded as weak, those who are discredited, who are denied the status of persons, tortured, exterminated. With those for whom there is no room, Christ is present in this world. He is mysteriously present in those for whom there seems to be nothing but the world at its worst.

Thomas Merton
"The Time of the End Is the Time of No Room"
from Raids on the Unspeakable

The paragraph continues: For them, there is no escape even in imagination. They cannot identify with the power structure of a crowded humanity which seeks to project itself outward, anywhere, in a centrifugal flight into the void, to get out there where there is no God, no man, no name, no identity, no weight, no self, nothing but the bright, self-directed, perfectly obedient and infinitely expensive machine. This is part of a much longer Christmas essay of Merton's on eschatology, fear, and joy.

Thanks to Charlie Hawes, who began a Christmas sermon with this passage a few years ago and fixed it in my mind.

Photographs by Mev Puleo (1963-1996). These and other photographs by Mev visible here are available for purchase. Please contact Mark Chmiel at MarkJChmiel@gmail.com for further information.

Quoted in The Tablet

The Tablet, whose articles you can't read online unless you subscribe, is probably the best Catholic periodical on the planet, or one of the best. It is certainly one of the most respected in the Northern Hemisphere and perhaps beyond. Published in England, weekly, thoughtful, thorough, independent.

Like all periodicals I'm sure they are struggling to stay afloat, so that may be the reason for the Web gatekeeping. Either that or the spammers and trolls.


At any rate, a dear friend wrote me yesterday morning with the news that I had achieved fame: The Tablet quoted me! More precisely, it quoted a passage from When in Doubt, Sing. Even more amazingly, the passage in question was in the good company of the Psalmist, Meister Eckhart, and Thomas Dorsey!

Ad majorem Dei gloriam!

(But good for the ego too during a hard week.)

Oh - it was in last week's issue.

(A new issue is just out with comment and analysis on the latest Catholic/Anglican brouhaha.)


Here are the quotes as they appeared:

The living Spirit [name of the feature / column]

[and an image of a dove which I can't seem to transfer here]

Both perfectionism and self-forgiveness bear a direct relation to our understanding of God. The first step of prayer is telling the truth about who and where we are. It is also, at the same time, learning the truth about who and where God is. We are the ones who tend to place limits on the mercy of God. Prayer involves a capacity to stretch our imagination, to imagine and therefore to begin knowing a God who is not a projection of our own self-condemnation … The idea that prayer is somehow a production (in the economic or in the theatrical sense – both are destructive) will take us away from prayer.

Jane Redmont
When in Doubt, Sing
(Sorin, 2008)


Our steps are
made firm by the Lord,
when he delights in our way;
though we stumble, we
shall not fall headlong,
for the Lord holds us by the hand.

Psalm 37: 23-24


If you have failings, then ask God frequently in prayer if it may not be to his honour and pleasure to take them from you, for you can do nothing without his help. He gives to each according to what is best for them and most suitable. If we are to make new clothes for someone, then we must make them according to their dimensions, and those which fit one will not fit another. We measure everyone to see what fits them. So too God gives everyone the best thing of all according to his knowledge of what is most suitable for them. Indeed, whoever trusts him entirely in this, receives and possesses in the least of things as much as they do in the greatest.

Meister Eckhart: selected writings
(Penguin Classics, 1994)


When the darkness appears and the night draws near,
And the day is past and gone,
At the river I stand,
Guide my feet,
hold my hand;
Take my hand, Precious Lord,
Lead me home.

Thomas Andrew Dorsey
(1899-1993)

Tomorrow, Labor Day, we write our Congressfolk; meanwhile, some resources on the legislative process

I will put more details up tomorrow, since it is late and I am prepping for class. Yes, I have to teach on Labor Day, at 8:30 a.m.

Meanwhile, here is your promised civics lesson: how a bill makes its way through the Congress. This comes from Health Care for America Now and it refers specifically to bills on health care reform and especially to HR 3200. Bills, committees, House, Senate, oh my! There is an item called "The Lay of the Land."

Setting aside health care, if you want a nonpartisan "How Congress Works" lesson, this one from Indiana University's Center on Congress is pretty good.

If you want a simple one-page summary of how Congress works, you can look here at a page prepared by STAND, the student-led division of the Genocide Intervention Network.

One of my favorite resources is NETWORK - A NationalCatholic Social Justice Lobby. Founded by sisters in 1971, the network is an excellent civic resource. Like everyone else, NETWORK has gone online. See here and click your way around. I wish the Episcopal Public Policy Network were half as helpful. NETWORK's health care efforts, with some good information, are visible here.

One of the things I like about NETWORK is that they are accessible. The material is clear and user-friendly. It also is religiously and ethically informed. There's a legislative action center. And there are educational resources. More tomorrow from these good folks, especially how-to tips. (Some of the how-to tips are from that page of resources, but I'll zero in on the ones we need to contact our Congressfolk.)


Click to enlarge.

Tomorrow: How to contact those Senators and Representatives, and a little pep talk as usual.

Tuesday: A mindfulness practice related to health care and health care reform.

Later in the week: Media-related things, as promised.

Blessings, all.

Third U.S. Sikh-Catholic Dialogue Retreat

Really!

I get all kinds of ecumenical and interreligious news in the (e-)mail every day and this was one of the more interesting articles to hit the inbox. No, I don't read them all, but I like to receive them nevertheless. I am a religious news pack-rat.

So here is the article on the Sikh-Catholic retreat.

I knew Francis Tiso, the head of the Catholic delegation to the retreat, because we overlapped at Harvard Divinity School for a year during our M.Div. studies. Back then he went by "Frank" and he wasn't anywhere near getting ordained. He went to a contemplative community with Brother David Steindl-Rast after graduation, not as a monk, but as part of an experiment in contemplative living. Interestingly, he is a priest of an Italian diocese. He also did doctoral work in Buddhist studies.

Francis Tiso and I also overlapped when I was in the Bay Area and I had no idea we did. Sounds like someone with whom to have an interesting conversation.

The BBC has a good overview of the Sikh religion, with resources, here.

To learn more about Sikhism and Sikhs in the United States, go to the Pluralism Project's website, and see the section on Sikhs here.

There were quite a few hate crimes against Sikhs immediately following 9/11 because Sikh men wear a turban and their attackers assumed they were Muslim.

Good Friday: the life and death of Sister Dorothy Stang

Yesterday evening I began my Good Friday reading, Martyr of the Amazon: The Life of Sister Dorothy Stang, by Roseanne Murphy.

Somehow I didn't want to read about Jesus. I wanted to read about someone who was living Jesus.

Dorothy Stang, a Sister of Notre Dame de Namur, lived and worked with Brazilian peasants in the landless people's movement in the Amazon. She was killed there in 2005.

Apparently there is a new documentary on her. There was a segment about it recently on PBS's "Now" program. Even the New York Post has written about it.

Website for the documentary, "They Killed Sister Dorothy," is here, with beautiful images and music and a trailer and all kinds of information. Narration by (yes!) Martin Sheen.

Stang was from Ohio and the Dayton Daily News wrote a three-part series on her after her death.

* * * * *
In related news, the Episcopal Café has a series of Stations of the Cross up. The one from Central America (El Salvador) is haunting. (Do not look at it if you are a trauma survivor; it is made up of drawings of tortured men and women. It resides at La UCA - the Jesuit-run University of Central America.) Another one is for children. Yet another is a series from Kenya. (I'd posted an image from that one two years ago here.)

Last year I posted the Arcatao Stations of the Cross from El Salvador. (That's a different series from the one mentioned above.)

And the year before, more Latin American Stations --images by Nobel Peace laureate Adolfo Pérez Esquivel with words from Argentina-- and some Stations by a Tanzanian artist with words by a womanist theologian from the U.S. (The latter, in a book called Where You There? is a favorite of mine.)

Two signs of the times in France

Two interesting stories on French culture and society. Warning: they are in French. I will be happy to provide a short summary in the late evening today; just leave a request in the Comments section.

1. Twelfth transpeople's march in Paris yesterday (Saturday) draws nearly 400 people. The annual Pride march in Paris, which is much larger, has not highlighted transpeople, who felt they needed their own public presence.

2. A former trader on the stock exchange became a monk two decades ago. Still under vows and living in a small community of brothers, he now teaches in a poor immigrant neighborhood of the Southern port city of Marseille.

Jim Egan, S.J., RIP; Nathaniel Arbiter, RIP; Saint Grendel of the Gravy, RIP and dance in heaven

Could someone please slow down on the sickness and dying?

I remembered three recently departed creatures of Godde at mass this morning: Grendel the dog, and two humans, Jim and Nat.

Many of you know about Grendel. He is now St. Grendel of the Gravy. His life and death touched many creatures. (I wrote about him briefly here. Many other bloggers did too, and more eloquently.) We will not forget him.

Jim is Jim Egan, an old colleague, a member of the Wisconsin Province of the Society of Jesus (a.k.a. the Jesuits), who died at the age of 73, of cancer, this past Thursday evening, October 2. Funeral is tomorrow (Tuesday) 10 a.m., St. John's Church at Creighton University (Omaha, Nebraska).

I remembered him in the prayers as a colleague of 20 years ago, but I spaced out (I was already sick). It was thirty years ago that we worked together. Lord, have mercy. I was the first woman chaplain at St. Paul's University Catholic Center in Madison, Wisconsin, which was both a parish and a campus ministry (and which is a very different place these days). Jim was a priest on staff there, the only Jesuit on the full-time staff --the other full time people were diocesan, plus one Franciscan for a while-- and he had one of the most vital spiritual lives of anyone I have ever met, and the gift of sharing it appropriately. He was also a spectactular liturgist and preacher.

Jim was open about his vulnerabilities --his being a recovering alcoholic, his past struggles with depression-- as well as able to be strong for and with people in the community who were suffering and struggling themselves. He was a true colleague, able to work with me as a woman (though I was, believe it or not, hired as the non-threatening candidate! they almost hired the other finalist instead; okay, you can stop laughing now) in an era when it was still new to have women as full-time pastoral ministers in the Catholic Church, especially those of us who were not nuns.

After his time in campus and parish ministry (he'd also worked as a hospital chaplain), Jim worked in several other areas: on an Indian reservation in South Dakota, in Uganda, in Omaha, Nebraska as "servant minister" to his Jesuit community, and again in a parish. One of his last written reflections is here, with a link to a photo. May he rest in peace and rise in glory.

My cousin Nat (a first cousin by marriage of my mother's) died peacefully in his sleep in the wee hours of Sunday morning, a few days after moving to a residential hospice. His wife Carolyn and daughters mourn and celebrate a long and good life. He was somewhere in his 90s, I think. I wrote a bit about him here after hearing he had gone into hospice. May the angels sing him into paradise. (I'll post an obituary of him here once the newspaper obits are out. It's too soon.)

Please continue to hold in your prayers my friends Deenie and Christy and David (they are also here).

Two from today's Times

Mother of Acts of Hope (age 90 - her birthday was the weekend I moved after the Great Tree Disaster) highly recommends this op-ed by Bob Herbert (photo left), "When Madmen Reign."

When President Bush went on television last week to drum up support for the bailout package, he looked almost dazed, like someone who’d just climbed out of an auto wreck.

“Our entire economy is in danger,” he said.

He should have said that he, along with his irresponsible Republican colleagues and their running buddies in the corporate and financial sectors, put the entire economy in danger. John McCain and his economic main man, Phil (“this is a mental recession”) Gramm, were right there running with them.

Meanwhile, back home in France...

This fascinating report, also published in today's New York Times, speaks of Catholic schools as havens of interreligious tolerance and companionship.

In France, which has only four Muslim schools, some of the country’s 8,847 Roman Catholic schools have become refuges for Muslims seeking what an overburdened, secularist public sector often lacks: spirituality, an environment in which good manners count alongside mathematics, and higher academic standards.

No national statistics are kept, but Muslim and Catholic educators estimate that Muslim students now make up more than 10 percent of the two million students in Catholic schools. In ethnically mixed neighborhoods in Marseille and the industrial north, the proportion can be more than half.

The quiet migration of Muslims to private Catholic schools highlights how hard it has become for state schools, long France’s tool for integration, to keep their promise of equal opportunity.