May 8, 2017
By:  Jane Bishop Halteman

Life-giving encounters:  knotting comforters, observing spring, celebrating family milestones, tracking Studebakers, volunteering at Villages, birdwatching

Parker Palmer’s What’s an Angry Quaker to Do, posted at On Being March 29, escaped me until this past week, but managing anger seems a worthy topic during the season of Eastertide, particularly this season of Eastertide when many people of faith find themselves at political odds with friends and neighbors, perhaps family, or in particular the present administration.

Palmer's column opens like this:  “I’m a Quaker. I stand in a religious tradition that asks me to live by such values as community, equality, simplicity, and non-violence. As a result, I frequently find myself in deep oatmeal—especially when it comes to politics, where I seem to have an anger management problem. Not long ago, a friend with whom I’d been having a heated political argument gave me a black t-shirt that says ‘One Mean Quaker.’”

Asking if anger can find “a role to play in the life of someone who aspires to non-violence,” Palmer says his response is different in three ways from those who “regard anger as a spiritual flaw to be eliminated.”

He suggests that “whitewashing in the name of God doesn’t improve the world—it discredits religion as yet another source of delusion.” Secondly, he says, he has discovered that forgiveness “is not always mine to give.”

And finally, he states that, while he is aware anger can harm the angry one, he has learned from three serious depressions that buried anger “poses more threats to my well being—and that of those around me—than anger expressed non-violently. Repressed anger is dangerous. Anger harnessed as an energy we can ride toward new life for all concerned is redemptive.”

Palmer reports wanting to “redouble my efforts to help us renew our capacity for civic community and civil discourse. I want to ride the energy of anger toward work that brings citizens together in life-giving live encounters—knowing that if the reality of ‘We the People’ continues to fade into mist and myth, we’ll lose our democracy.”

What ways have you found to ride the energy of anger in the current political climate or some other situation where you recognize that anger might be debilitating if not directed in healthy ways?  Connections are important to me; I have recently broadened my connections to take on more responsibility to offer social media services to our own Ten Thousand Villages store along with other peace and justice efforts around town. 

Most weeks I find myself sufficiently “distracted” by family, church, and local activities so that pent-up anger is diffused positively by engaging in life-giving encounters.  This past week, as illustrated in the collage above, I enjoyed tying a few knots with Barbara and Elaine on a comforter Betty made for refugees, paying attention to spring vegetables and flowers and the general greening up of our part of the world, celebrating a family birthday, doing some social media posts for Villages, cruising four blocks of Studebakers in downtown South Bend, and learning some new birdwatching tips from Marty.

A number of people from our congregation gather the second Monday of each month (that’s tonight at 6:30 if you are interested in joining them) “to talk about and take political action.  We meet regularly at Restoration Farm and anyone is welcome to come.  We update, encourage, share articles that are useful to read, attempt to take the pulse of the public and governance.  We also laugh a lot, good medicine these days,” says Danile.

I hope to post more information next week on this KRMC group’s due diligence with respect to informed citizen action; in the meantime, take a moment between now and then to listen to Home of the Brave (Immigrants and Pilgrims and Refugees), shared on Facebook this week by a friend.  The link features a new song by JD Martin (whom some of us knew as Jerry Derstine back in the day) and two other songwriters who, it appears, have found a useful way to manage post-election energy. 

May 1, 2017
By:  Jane Bishop Halteman

How a Saint Mary's College reflection photo created connection...

“People say, what is the sense of our small effort? They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time. A pebble cast into a pond causes ripples that spread in all directions. Each one of our thoughts, words, and deeds is like that. No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There is too much work to do.”

Finding this quote from Dorothy Day, Catholic social activist and co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement, reminded me this past week that it’s too soon to quit during what feels like a tumultuous time in our country and our world.

Making connections in this season of resurrection is one way to revitalize flagging hope.  I made an interesting connection a few days ago via a photo challenge in which I participated during the month of April.  Hosted by Susannah Conway, who provides on-line photo prompts (suggestions to help participants find photo opportunities), this contemplative daily discipline reminds members to “use the challenge as a way to give yourself ten minutes to notice your surroundings and take a breath.” 

With a series of prompts like ‘serenity,’ ‘doorway,’ and ‘reflection,’ contributor photos and journal entries offered a dose every day in April of profound day-brighteners and thoughtful sentiments about the ups and downs of the journey.  Two days after I posted the above photo in response to the ‘reflection’ prompt, I heard from Marian in Florida, who recognized Saint Mary’s College as the place where her friend conducts a women’s chorus:  “Beautiful, Jane!” she said.  “If you get the chance to hear the Saint Mary’s chorus or South Bend Chamber Singers, do go! My friend directs some beautifully ‘reflective’ concerts with both choirs.”

More on-line correspondence led to the awareness that both Marian as a musician and I as a journalist are involved in “writing” story.  I was intrigued by her understanding of prepping choral presentations as “writing” them and googled her name; what a delight to discover her TEDx talk entitled Transformative Listening. 

The introduction to her talk says this about her:  “As a choral conductor, Marian Dolan examines silences broken by stories told through song and the level of understanding and compassion we can achieve if we listen. These musical stories give us an opportunity to better the world by listening and allowing others to heal by sharing their stories.”

The introduction further asserts that “Marian Dolan is a musician. When asked what she plays, she smiles and answers: people. She’s a choral conductor, so her ‘instrument’ is literally a very human one. Together, a chorus and director are artistic storytellers, singing stories-in-song….Breaking boundaries to sing stories means being a bridge-builder of connection and community.”

I urge you to watch Marian’s TEDx talk, where you will find her sharing about the concert she named Voices of Courage (marking 10 years since 9/11) and the concert she called Finding a Voice (honoring women who chose to say ‘no’ to gender violence as they used lament to break their silence and move from hope to healing and eventual restoration).

She offers a clip from this performance of Senzenina and the amazing story of meeting Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa while she was in her second year as a music professor in the theology school at Emory University.

She recalls Tutu’s answer to another faculty member’s question at a retreat where she first met the archbishop:  “When the painful stories were so overwhelming, what did you do?”  Referencing his experiences with Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) hearings where victims of apartheid violence were invited to share their stories before the commission and perpetrators, Tutu responded:  “I sang…when my spirit could hold no more, I sang.” 

Marian remembers that “he quietly started singing right there” with the gathered faculty on retreat, just as he had done in those TRC hearings.  Senzenina means “What have we done to deserve this?” and begs an answer to the much larger question “Why is this violence perpetrated on us?” she explains. 

“I've really sat with that greater insight in light of Tutu singing it in the TRC hearings, and of his musical invitation being responded to by all who are present... that after hearing these horrifically real, long-silenced, very personal stories of violence, for him to start the communal singing Senzenina is, to me, beyond powerful. I can't even begin to imagine the sound of that communal ‘lament’ in that room in that moment...of what it meant for all who were present to literally ‘carry’ the now-unsilenced story and lament therein.”

As we continue the Eastertide journey of resurrection living, notice opportunities to engage in life-giving connections and transformative listening.  Who has helped you unveil more of your own journey stories? Who have you listened into revealing more of his or hers?  How are we becoming “bridge-builders of connection and community,” perhaps actually helping to carry the pain of another?

April 24, 2017
By:  Jane Bishop Halteman

Our wonderful Earth; how do we keep it safe from harm?

Earth Day (this past Saturday) and the last few days here in South Bend couldn’t have been more beautiful…vivid blue skies and off-and-on-again warmth coaxed out bright green leaves and glorious blossoms like redbud and dogwood.  Jenny Wrens sang lustily as fragrance exploded from backyard viburnum and lilac bushes.

Local planners reportedly expected 300-400 marchers in Saturday’s March for Science: South Bend, which coincided with Earth Day, and were pleasantly surprised by a turnout estimated at 1,100, according to an on-line article in the South Bend Tribune.

“The March for Science began as a notion batted around online on Reddit after the Women’s March on Washington, which was held January 21, the day after the inauguration. The idea snowballed after it was endorsed by numerous mainstream science organizations, which vowed that it would not be a partisan event. It eventually became a global phenomenon, held in more than 600 cities on six continents—and cheered on by scientists on a seventh, Antarctica,” a story published Saturday by The Washington Post reveals.

Earth Day Network reports that back on the first Earth Day “on April 22, 1970, 20 million Americans took to the streets, parks, and auditoriums to demonstrate for a healthy, sustainable environment in massive coast-to-coast rallies,” noting that “in the spirit of the teach-ins brought on by the original Earth Day, we are here again to promote awareness of the urgent and unprecedented need to show up for our environment so we can live healthy and sustainable lives.”

According to its website, the Sierra Club, founded by conservationist John Muir in 1892, is “the nation’s largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization, with more than two million members and supporters. Our successes range from protecting millions of acres of wilderness to helping pass the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and Endangered Species Act. More recently, we’ve made history by leading the charge to move away from the dirty fossil fuels that cause climate disruption and toward a clean energy economy.”

The Sierra Club works to “mobilize voters to pressure Congress and other policymakers to protect endangered species, defend national parks and wildlife refuges from dangerous drilling, stop the Keystone XL pipeline, prevent reckless new offshore drilling in the Arctic, Atlantic, Gulf and Pacific, and save the Environmental Protection Agency from an onslaught of attacks that threaten our health and our planet.”

A local South Bend Sierra Club chapter, which had been largely inactive in recent years, has revitalized since January in the wake of present administration activity. These articles reveal some of the broader reasons why people participated in the March for Science on Earth Day: famine and deforestation. Nature Conservancy president and CEO Mark Tercek shares here why that organization supports “science-based work managing and protecting our parks, wildlife refuges, sea shores, fisheries, forests, air and water quality.” For more Earth Day history, read last year’s Glimpses of Healing and Hope blog post here. 

Brad Roth, pastor of West Zion Mennonite Church in Moundridge, KS, said in a Mennonite World Review article this past week that “Earth Day is a great time for Christians to show our love for God’s green Earth.” Suggesting that “love for the soil may be the most biblical way to approach love for the Earth,” Roth says, “God placed Adam and Eve in the garden to ‘tend and care’ (Gen. 2:15) for the adamah—‘soil’ or ‘earth’ (3:23). Humanity’s care for Eden was first and foremost care for the soil.”

He continues, “Undoubtedly, God’s charge to tend and care for the soil had to do with its fragility. Soil is a resource that only slowly renews through the action of fungi and bacteria, insects, and earthworms. But more than the soil’s fragility, it’s perhaps the soil’s capacity to bring forth new life that causes God to confer on humankind a special charge to tend and care for it.” Roth concludes that some of the best ways for people of faith to take care of the soil are planting a garden, making compost, and encouraging earthworms. 

Mennonite Central Committee reports seven ways it cares for God’s creation (solar power, selling thrift, recycling, energy efficiency, geothermal promotion, and advocacy work) in this article; Mennonite Creation Care Network leader Jennifer Halteman Shrock offers insights here into how congregations might get started with creation care based on individuals’ interests and perspectives.  She describes “simple living servants, foodies, gardeners, and building geeks” as householders, the doers or ‘hands and feet,’ while she names the “naturalists, wounded witnesses, and watershed disciples” as regionally rooted or ‘heart’ people. Finally she categorizes the “theologians, activists, and professionals” in the congregation as the big picture people whom she designates the ‘eyes of the body.’ The challenge for individual congregations becomes sorting out individual gifts and coming to understand how those gifts and interests might merge to facilitate Earth care.  

National Public Radio’s Chew on this for Earth Day offers ways to consider how what we eat takes a toll on the Earth.  The story challenges readers/listeners to waste not, want not; rethink eating beef and lamb; consider plant-based dishes in restaurants. 

Spirituality & Practice offers these 12 Spiritual Practices to Honor the Earth. “Spiritual practices are the best ways we know to demonstrate kindness and courtesy toward the Earth, to express our gratitude and wonder, to yield to the mystery and the beauty of it all,” the authors say.  Will you practice attention to nature, devotion to the Earth, joy in the plant and animal kingdom, openness to your environment, or perhaps recommit yourself to living “lightly and respectfully on the planet” during this season of resurrection?

April 17, 2017
By:  Jane Bishop Halteman

Trees begin to show the green haze of spring, a resurrection reminder

Back on April 1 the Fetzer Institute offered this post which featured “Hurry,” a poem from the Afghan Women’s Writing Project, which said, in part: 

I don’t have money, power
or authority, but I have God who gave me
a mouth with lips for smiling, I have language for speaking,
I can use them for good,
to carry messages of peace and love and forgiveness.

Using our smiles and language for good are commitments we might all make in the face of unrest around the world as we begin to live into the post-Easter season of resurrection, sometimes called Eastertide. 

Holy Week brought us face-to-face with violence once again, as we continued to lament the loss of UN peacekeeper MJ Sharp (see his father’s Facebook page here for more information) and cringed as our own country dropped the ‘mother of all bombs’ on Afghanistan.  

Iris de Leon-Hartshorn offers these words in Lament and Prayer for Afghanistan: “We as a church lament that our country operates within a paradigm that violence can produce peace. We as a nation continue to practice violence against our enemies. We confess our own complicity in how we too support such actions with the use of our tax dollars and in our daily interactions when we do not extend our hands to our enemies. We ask for God’s mercy and forgiveness.” 

Pastor Dave reminded us in his Easter morning sermon that “God still brings life out of our dark and dead places” with a brief telling of the story of Patrick who pushed his friend Justin in a wheelchair across northern Spain on the 500-mile El Camino de Santiago.  Dave spoke of the power of community and the fact that nearly 200 persons representing 27 nations assisted Patrick and Justin on the way, exemplifying the power of resurrection love from strangers. 

This link to last year’s Glimpses of Healing and Hope Easter blog references Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat’s Easter:  Resurrection as Spiritual Practice page at their Spirituality & Practice website.  They offer a variety of options for living into the resurrection, including these:  find ways to recognize renewal of life around you; notice radiance in people, places, growing things as signs of new birth; make way for new life by breaking down barriers; live in the moment (the only time the Divine brings forth new life); set the stage for new life by working for peace and justice; stay open to change as a sign of your receptivity to transformation.

And then there’s Anne Lamott who pretty much always speaks her mind and many of our minds as well.  Perhaps this is how to achieve resurrection living in the midst of chaos of one kind or another:  “It's amazing to stop pretending that things are not as bizarre and dire or hard as they are, in the marriage, for your grown child, in the nation. To be where your feet are, and to feel it all: the swirl of doom, of gratitude, of incredulous fear, of wonder, of hate, judgment, love.”  For more from Anne, see the rest of her post here.

Nancy, who just returned from DR Congo last week, reported in yesterday's service that she witnessed resurrection power as she observed a literacy teacher-training program in Kinshasa.   Read more about her experience here and watch her blog for future musings.  

Where do you notice signs of the resurrection like peace, love, forgiveness taking place around you?  In the words of Pastor Dave, “Live into the power of the resurrection where you see it.  Go and tell someone!”