Africa Matters

While in Uganda, my base will be the Bethany House, where I will also be hosting a group of leaders of the  Amahoro-Africa initiative for a 3 day theological intensive, and later in July leading a 12 day pilgrimage through Uganda for  a group comprising Christians from Chicago, Kuching (Malaysia) and North Carolina. Talk about ‘catholicity’ in the true sense of the world!  Check back soon for reflections from this exciting time.

Friends, as 150 participants and 20 faculty gathered here yesterday for our second annual 5-day Duke Summer Institute, from 30 states and 7 countries, I appreciate your ongoing prayers for me, Chris, our incredible Center team, all the volunteers, and most of all the participants and faculty.  The participants include senior leaders of organizations, colleges and universities, and leaders from grassroots ministries and congregations. I will not be teaching a regular seminar at the Institute. Instead, I will be facilitating a strategic time with eight east African leaders and partners to design an Institute in the Great Lakes and plan the next chapter of the African Great Lakes Initiative (GLI).

Thank you for your prayers.

Sixteen years ago today (May 10, 1994) Nelson Mandela was sworn in as the first black president of South Africa. Listen to his inauguration speech:

As I think about this event, I think about Mandela’s freedom struggles, and his extraordinary leadership that made this event possible. The inspiration and lessons from his journey and leadership are best captured for me in two quotations. First, First, the closing words of his biography, The Long Walk to Freedom:

I have walked that long road to freedom. I have tried not to falter; I have made missteps along the way. But I have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb. I have taken a moment here to rest, to steal a view of the glorious vista that surrounds me, to look back on the distance I have come. But I can rest only for a moment, for with freedom comes responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not yet ended.

Secondly, the famous words that Mandela actually never said, but are often attributed to his inaugural address. The words are from Marianne Williamson’s  A Return to Love. They are fitting words to honor and dedicate to this great son of the land – father of the rainbow nation:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.’ We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we’re liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

Happy Birthday South Africa. Happy Anniversary Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (and a happy 92^nd birthday coming up: July 18).

What irony that I would read Jonathan Wilson Hartgrove’s new book The Wisdom of Stability: Rooting Faith in a Mobile Culture on a plane and between flights in an airport. Returning from Portland, Maine, from a one day speaking event on immigration relations in the city.

I can immediately appreciate the spiritual, social and theological challenges of being constantly on the move that Jonathan discusses in The Wisdom of Stability.

As always Jonathan’s writing is fresh, and is able to get to the heart of our cultural malaise as a people always on the go, and how that leads us to live superficial lives devoid of care, attention and lasting commitments.

“Staying put and paying attention are, rather, dynamic disciplines aimed at helping us to grow and progress toward wholeness.” (51)

The Wisdom of Stability is not only a great spiritual reading book, but also offers insights and examples of habits and patterns of living that help us to put down roots in a ‘place’ and in ‘community’ as a way to grow into holiness and wholeness.

It is also a helpful book for understanding the significance of location (and ‘relocation’) as central to the work of reconciliation. Reconciliation is not only about the event of bringing warring communities to the table (like my being invited to facilitate town hall discussion on immigration issues in Portland, Maine) – the far more challenging task is the crafting (or ‘knitting’) of local neighborhoods that live in peace. Such a task, Jonathan’s book reminds us, is not spectacular; it has an ordinariness and everydayness to it – and remains always broken and incomplete; and yet there it is: the most concrete expression of new creation in a place.

The Wisdom of Stability is also a very helpful book in understanding mission (I definitely plan to assign it for my World Christianity classes) – as it speaks directly especially to those who feel called to make a difference in the world.

“To imagine stability as mission is not to assume that we will change our neighbors and the broken places where we are if only we can muster the resolve to stick it out. Rather, it is to acknowledge that there is good news in this place- stability at we might not have seen at first, but without which we could not even begin. If God is faithful in exile and present inhuman flesh, then everything – every place – is now holy. We learn to enjoy the fruit of stability as we embrace God’s mission where we are” (139).

Check out The Wisdom of Stability – and I hope you find it as fresh and helpful as I did.

Over this past weekend, I was in Omaha for the Word Made Flesh Board Meeting, where we marked and celebrated a significant transition in the leadership of the 17 year old ministry among the poor in the world. Chris and Phileena Heuertz now serve together as the international co-directors of Word Made Flesh (until now, Chris has served as the International director and Phileena as the associate director for community care). The transition into co-directorship is not only an affirmation of Phileena’s leadership and gifts within the organization, it is a celebration of the mutuality of the gifts of activism and contemplation, of advocacy and administration; of the outer and the inner calling; of St. Francis and St. Clare that Chris and Phileena model and live into as husband and wife, and now as co-directors for partnership and community accompaniment respectively.

WMF Board

There are many organizations that serve the poor around the world. What makes WMF unique is their commitment to community and friendship with the poor. In the ten countries in which WMF “operates,” the goal is not so much to serve or even minister to the poor, but to live among, and be friends with, the poor. As Chris Heuertz (and Christine Pohl) write  in Friendship at the Margins (one of the titles in Resources for Reconciliation series of CFR):

“The possibility of and longing for local friendships is what drew many present staff members to WMF. Much like career missionaries, we learnt to love those we had gone to serve. But as the friendships on the streets and the neighborhoods grew, we came to understand that we were not ministering ‘to’ our friends, but in ministry ‘among’ them. We ourselves were being ministered to as authentic and humanizing relationships emerged.

“As our friendships grew and deepened, we discovered that we loved the people among whom we lived and ministered…. Gradually we realized that even more than we wanted to ‘minister’ to our friends, we wanted to be in community with them.

We were surprised. In relationship and friendships with those who are poor, we were learning to follow our friends to God’s heart. Along the way, we redefined success in terms of faithfulness.”

-Chris Heuertz and Christine Pohl, Friendship at the Margins, 33-4

Be sure to check out this wonderful book, but also be on the look out for Phileena’s book: Pilgrim of a Soul: Contemplative Spirituality for the Active Life (to be released in June).

I remember when a priest friend of mine from North Carolina came back from his first visit to Uganda. He talked about his experience going to mass in a parish in Uganda. The service was very lively and energizing, he said: there was music, clapping, dancing, an offertory procession with gifts of produce and live animals, animated preaching, personal testimonies, communion, etc. The service lasted from ten in the morning to three in the afternoon. “I thoroughly enjoyed it,” Bob said, “but it also felt like too much of a good thing.”

"Mystery Revealed," James Fissel

That is kind of how Easter feels, or at least the Easter Vigil service I attended. The service started at 8 PM, and we did not get out till around 11 PM. Moreover, the service was so full of lively music and rich symbolism: from the blessing of the Easter fire; the lighting of the Easter candle; the procession (led by the Easter candle) into the dark church, which gradually became filled with the glow of flickering lights from our small candles; the aroma of incense; the signing of the Exultet, the readings (we did 5 instead of the suggested 7); the singing of the Gloria and great Alleluia; the gospel proclamation; the blessing of the baptismal water; the baptism and anointing of the newly baptized; the renewal of the baptismal promises; the Eucharist… Not only was the service packed with lots of activities, everything was excessive. Talk about “too much of a good thing.”
I had received news about some disappointing developments at home that Saturday morning. As I drove to the Vigil service, I was still feeling sadness and anguish from the news. The gift of Easter that I distinctly remember is that when I was driving home later that night after the Vigil service, I was feeling completely different. I still remembered the news from home, but the sadness and anguish that I felt earlier in the day had disappeared. In fact, I was feeling very hopeful about the whole event. Somehow, in the three hours of the “too much of a good thing” as we participated in the drama of Christ’s resurrection from the dead, Easter had happened. Anguish, fear and sadness had given way to hope and joy.

What the three hours of Easter Vigil confirmed is that Easter does happen: God does indeed Easter (a Franciscan priest taught me to see Easter as a verb) new life, hope and joy in our lives, but that takes time for us to even experience or feel it. It also takes a bit of “too much” of God’s grace – an excess of God’s Eastering work, through various symbols, signs, gestures, insights, friendships and  community. I hope and pray that you take the time to experience something of this “too much” of Easter during this Holy Season.

San Diego

Wed 24^th March 2010

I am here to attend and speak at the “Nurturing of the Prophetic Imagination” conference, hosted by Point Loma Nazarene University. This morning I spoke in their chapel service (to over 1000 students: yes, chapel is compulsory!), and have just returned from the studios of the local PBS (you can listen to the interview).

As I prepare for my opening remarks at the opening banquet of the conference this evening, I am again reminded of Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was killed 30 years ago today (March 24, 1980). The story of Romero’s life, his ministry and advocacy on behalf of the poor and particularly his journey through the night to the little village parish of Aguilares, where he said mass for his friend Fr. Rutillio Grande (and the two others killed with him). It is this event more than any other that transformed the generally quiet and cautious cleric into the outspoken advocate of the poor and voiceless.  He became a tireless prophet for a new future, yet Romero clearly understood that this new future always lies beyond us. The prayer/poem attributed to him captures well what the prophetic imagination is all about:

It helps now and then to step back and take a long view.
The Kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,
it is beyond our vision.

We accomplish in our lifetime only a fraction
of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work.
Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of
saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us.

No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith. No confession
brings perfection, no pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the Church’s mission.
No set of goals and objectives include everything.

This is what we are about. We plant the seeds that one
day will grow. We water the seeds already planted
knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces effects
far beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of
liberation in realizing this.
This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning,
a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s
grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results, but that is the
difference between the master builder and the worker.

We are workers, not master builders, ministers, not
messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own.

More at http://www.larynandjanel.com/blog/prophets-of-a-future-not-our-own-oscar-romero

I want to share some recent, exciting news with friends and readers and guests alike: the Divinity School at Duke has recently granted me tenure as Associate Professor of Theology and World Christianity, effective in July! I am at once honored and humbled. Thank you to all who have supported me during my time here.

Emmanuel

Greetings!

The Center for Reconciliation site now features a photo journal and more extensive report on this year’s GLI gathering, “Politics, Leadership and the Christian Calling,” held in Burundi (discussed in posts below).

In addition, you may read a workbook I put together for the three-day event:”For Such a Time as This: Politics, Leadership and the Christian Calling.”  This resource focuses on the biblical story of Esther as a model for political engagement.

I hope in viewing these, you get a fuller sense of how truly exciting of a time the Gathering was for all involved!

-Emmanuel

Friends,

Podcasts are now available of the plenary talk I gave at last October’s Faith, Film & Justice Forum in Seattle, “Justice, Forgiveness, and Reconciliation in the Wake of Genocide? The End of Words,” as well as an interview conducted with Tom Ryan of The Other Journal. They may be found here.  Thanks to our friends at The Other Journal for making these available.

Emmanuel