Believer Beware

To Pardon all our F***in' iniquities

Laurel Snyder grew up in a home where religion was somewhere between the opiate of the masses and a kettle of fish better left alone. As She did go to Hebrew school on Sundays but only to keep the grandparents off their case. After her parents' divorce, her mother started going to church. This caused Laurel much confusion, trying to sort out the often opposing messages between church and synagogue. She was never quite sure what was a bad word since it changed with the religious views of the family. In time, following religion classes in college and a host of other influences, Laurel began to shape a Judaism that fit her political interests and aesthetic.

And now she finds herself trying to navigate the Jewish season of awe, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Yom Kippur is the time to ask forgiveness of those we have harmed. During the Yom Kippur service, chests are thumped and a prayer is recited, called the Vidui. The prayer is an alphabetic recitation of the communal sins committed. Laurel calls it a string around the finger, a way to begin a new year by apologizing to others and ourselves (maybe even to God if we like) for our mistakes and missed chances. If you ask three times then the other person has to forgive you. if they don't, you are forgiven anyway. You get a do-over, if you bother to ask.

Some of the wisdom of an ancient path which Laurel affirms in her earthy style.

Peter

Oscar Romero and History

It was March 24. Just a couple of hours before the procession to remember the 30th anniversary of the assassination of Oscar Romero. Before we joined the march, our group was invited to visit the headquarters of the National Civil Police. It was chilling to walk through this palatial building, knowing that underneath the lovely courtyards lay the clandestine cells where death squads brought citizens of this country to suffer at the hands of the police.

We met with a director of Investigations. This man is responsible for investigating crime today and the disappeared from the years of the war. He is Augusto Castaneda and he is also a member of Emmanuel Baptist Church. He told us one of the best fruits of last year's election was the reform of the police force. A number of commanders were replaced so that now finally the police are no longer given the freedom to do whatever they want. Discipline and accountability have been enforced.

I saw a photograph on his shelf of Augusto and Desmond Tutu who as you know was one of the leaders that contributed to the end of Apartheid in South Africa. Augusto told us that it came from a time when he was in Haiti at election time providing security for Desmond Tutu.

Augusto asked Tutu if he could have a photo with him. After the picture Tutu asked,

Where do you come from?

I come from El Salvador, the home of Oscar Romero.

And what do you think of him?

I think he is one of the greatest men in the history of El Salvador.

Tutu shook his head. He said, "No. Oscar Romero is one of the greatest men in the history of the world."

These were the words ringing in my ears as we walked that afternoon through he streets of San salvador to the Cathedral and the tomb of Romero. Fitting on the verge of Holy Week.

Peter

Everybody has a mother and they all die

-----

This is excerpt #6 from, " Believer, Beware: First-Person Dispatches from the Margins of Faith"


Jeff Sharlet says, "Mine did; your will too. When she does - if she hasn't already - you'll be sorely tempted to make sense of what has happened."

Jeff speaks from experience. He asked the doctors for her medical records. They told him that they would do him no good and that if it was a lawsuit he was after that he'd lose because they knew how to handle these things.

He asked his grandmother for some of his mother's letters and it was in these letters and poems that he received some understanding of who she was. She developed a faith out of many faiths. In one letter she wrote to a doctor, she said, "For some reason I don't find it necessary to be exclusive. I concentrate on Buddhist meditation and Christian prayer. And sometimes a phrase comes to me that seems addressed to the Great Spirit."

But I like best her poems, such as this one from three months before she died,

"This body, bound in skin and downy hair
Is shuddering, weeping.
It breathes and whispers a thank you with each breath.
It likes to be giddy.
It likes the mysterious warm tingle of red wine on a dark winter night,
The startle of fragrance when an orange is cut.
It likes the smack of cold winter air..
It like to dance until it is the music."


Peter

Love: Prince or Frog

Cathleen Falsani, author of " The Dude Abides: The Gospel According to the Coen Brothers" , in a recent Sojourners article, related her attempt at a reading at a friend's wedding. After much thought she chose excerpts from Tom Robbins' " Still Life with a Woodpecker" which featured an exchange of letters between an environmental princess named Leigh-Cheri and a tequila-swilling outlaw called Bernard:

"The most important thing is love," said Leigh-Cheri. "I know that now. There's no point in saving the world if it means losing the moon... I'm not quite 20, but thanks to you, I've learned something that many women never learn: Prince Charming really is a toad. And the Beautiful Princess has halitosis. The bottom line is that a) people are never perfect, but love can be. b) that is the only way that the vile and the mediocre can be transformed , and c) doing that makes it that. Loving makes love. Loving makes itself. We waste time looking for the perfect lover instead of creating the perfect love."

Bernard's letter, via his attorney, arrived shortly.

"Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won't adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is to sign on as its accomplice. Instead of vowing to honour and obey, maybe we should swear to aid and abet. That would mean that security is out of the question, The words, "make" and "stay" become inappropriate. My love for you has no strings attached. I love you for free."

So here's a mix of realism, a love's bad breath, mixed with a degree of idealism which must be part of any new venture, or we'd never set out. If we were to write or borrow some lines to declare our love for a new love or a mature love, how would it have grown, evolved since you first met?

Peter

I am a Sea

.
This is excerpt #5 from "Believer, Beware: First-Person Dispatches from the Margins of Faith"


Patton Dodd remembers a day when he was 12 years old, listening to the singing of hundreds of junior high evangleical Christians. They sing:

I am a sea! I am a sec-aiche! I am a sea-aiche are eye aye en!

He has no idea what they are saying. It turns out they are singing:

I am a C! I am a C-h! I am a C-h-r-i-s-t-i-a-n!

Now years later Dodd says that shouting something does not mean it is entered into your heart. He no longer can affirm that evangelical certainty. But I sense that there's something there that he is missing.

There are countless dropouts from Christianity. Other refer to them as graduates. I wish for them and for us all, a more flexible faith, a faith that can mature and develop and continue to evolve. So many exit the faith without realizing that many followers of Christ no longer adhere to the triumphalistic faith of the literalists.

It is possible to be part of a community of the Spirit that enlarges rather than restricts the spirit. I want to say to these foks, don't stop the search.

Peter

The Temple Door

This is excerpt #4 from, "Believer, Beware: First-Person Dispatches from the Margins of Faith"



Danielle Trussoni writes of her travel in Vietnam. Is she a pilgrim or a tourist? Her father had been one of the countless tragedies that war left in its wake and now the daughter has come hoping to make some sense of his broken life.

One hot afternoon, Danielle finds her way to the doors of a Buddhist temple. An old monk invites her in. He asks her if she is a Christian. She says she was raised Christian but has no idea what she believes any longer. He looks on her with pity. "You must discover this. It is important to know who you are." When she was about to leave, the old monk offers three joss sticks of incense and tells her that she must pray. "Pray for what?" She asks. "You will know," he said, "when you begin."

As she tries to pray, and through the haze of the incense, Danielle recalls the family movies of her childhood. Before her parents split up, they used to gather in the evening, kids in their pyjamas, to watch 8mm film projected on the wall. Her father always said those were the best years of his life.

She recalls watching those movies again after graduate school. One scene stands out. Her father is walking along side of her as she learns to ride, holding the bar of her bicycle seat. She recalls falling and skinning her knee, but the actual event is captured on film. She doesn't fall. Her father had been there to catch her. Danielle realizes that her memory is inaccurate, coloured by later conflict.

Danielle prays for her father's illness to disappear. She prays that all the terrible things that happened in war would never happen again. She prays for peace.

Some of the most important discoveries come when we are in a strange place. The experience of dislocation allows us to explore in ways we don't when we are in a familiar place. You don't have to step out of your present context to gain perspective, but sometimes it helps.

Peter

What's past Jersey?

This is excerpt #3 from, "Believer, Beware: First-Person Dispatches from the Margins of Faith".



Seth has been visiting with Jeffrey twice a week for several months. Jeffrey is in the Juvenile Detention Facility in the South Bronx. Seth is trying to teach Jeffrey and the rest of the class to meditate. Jeffrey sits in the back and rarely says anything. He appears completely disinterested. Seth asks, "What it's done for you?"

It turns out that Jeffrey meditates every day in his room. Seth is taken aback.

"...every night I go into my room and I read for a while. Then I turn out the light and do the breathing stuff you taught us. In, out, in, out. Fifteen, twenty minutes. Then I do my prayers and go to sleep...There's this place I can get alone in my room. I get into the zone...It's like duhhhh. You know what I mean... I can have everything I want in there, total freedom. It is real strong, like I was...well you know, like at peace."

"..but they don't let me stay in there. The staff kicks out...All day long we got to sit out here on this unit. It f... sucks...I can't be happy out here. All this noise. The TV is blaring all the time...And people always coming up and bothering you...No peace, man. No way I can be in the zone out here.."

Seth says, "That's why it's called a practice. Inside your room you got it, man. And that's great, keep it up, (but it) isn't about finding a place and escaping, that's too easy. The real training is, can you do it anywhere, anytime...the peace is within you, Jeffrey, not within your room."

Seth tells him that he used to live in the quiet woods and meditation was easy. When he came to New York it was tough, but "I didn't put my head under a pillow.."

Jeffrey wants to know if the forest is in Jersey. Seth says, "It's way past Jersey." Jeffrey asks, "What's past Jersey?"

Peter


You can also send your comments to assistant.webmaster@emmanuelunited.ca and I will make sure they are posted.