Mosaic Mennonites

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Living in grace and difference

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Marking 25 years of credentialing women in Franconia Conference

by Emily Ralph, Salford

My most vivid memory from the fall of 1987 was sitting in a circle with my preschool classmates taking turns shaking a jar of cream an impossibly long time until it became—wonder of wonders!—butter.  There isn’t much drama when you’re four: arguments over who plays with who on the playground, the boredom of lying wide awake on the mat during naptime, joy at seeing Mom again at the end of the day.

Marty Kolb-Wyckoff
Marty Kolb-Wyckoff was the first woman licensed in Franconia Conference. Photo by Andrew Huth.

While I was building with blocks and coloring pictures in that Ohio preschool, history was in the making 400 miles away.

Delegates from Franconia Conference had spent several years in conversation and discernment, listening, talking, and praying about the question of women in leadership.  That fall, without much fanfare, delegates voted to allow congregations to request credentialing for female leaders.  In fact, the decision was made so quietly and gently that the newsletter announcement a few months later only took up three inches of column space.

This past Assembly marked the 25th anniversary of this decision.  I am still in awe sometimes that this happened in my lifetime.  As a licensed pastor in Franconia Conference, I think about how different my life would be now if that decision hadn’t been made.  I am so grateful to those leaders who wrestled with a difficult issue and came to a graceful and gracious decision together.

That’s the beauty of the “women in leadership” conversation that Franconia Conference had in the 1980s—it was conducted with love and respect for the diversity of opinion within our conference.  Unlike some other conferences, Franconia didn’t lose a single church when that decision was made.  And this gives me incredible hope.

Twenty-five years later, we’re still having difficult conversations and there will be new difficult conversations twenty-five years from now.  But the Spirit of unity, the Spirit of love, not fear—that is, the Spirit of Jesus—is with us today, just as that same Spirit was with conference leaders twenty-five years ago.  This Spirit allows us to find unity not just despite our differences but as we acknowledge and celebrate our differences.

Logan, Emily, and Cadi
Emily with her nephew and niece–how will they reflect on today’s conversations in 25 years?

I don’t know what the future holds; I don’t know what decisions we will be making in the coming years.  But somewhere nearby, there are little boys and girls swinging, and building Lego castles, and maybe even shaking jars of cream into butter who will someday reflect on our conversations—may they be inspired by our devotion, our integrity, our perseverance, and most of all, our love for one another.

Delivering Christ to a waiting world

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by Donna Merow, Ambler

live nativity at Towamencin
The live nativity at Towamencin congregation. Photo by Casie L. Allebach.

Christmas. I have long been ambivalent about this holy season.  Don’t get me wrong.  I LOVE Christmas—the anticipation of Advent, the children’s pageant, singing “Silent Night” by candlelight with guitar accompaniment, the live nativity, the retelling of the familiar story, the making and wrapping of gifts.

But I also dread its coming—the gaudy lawn decorations, inane songs like “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” blaring from the radio, the excesses of the celebration.  I lament with Linus its commercialization and long to discover if the Grinch’s Whoville observation is farther reaching and that it can, indeed, come “without packages, boxes, or bags.”

I trace my ambivalence to singing “Will Santy Came to Shanty Town?” for a school program when I was about nine.  The song is a child’s first person wondering if Santa will visit his side of the tracks this time around or if his mother will have to repaint his toys the way she did the year before.  At the time I needed to believe in the magic of Christmas more than anything.  My parents had recently divorced, which necessitated a move, and my world was turned upside down by the addition of a stepfather who drank too much.  But Eddy Arnold’s musical autobiography captured my youthful imagination.  The revelation that Santa apparently didn’t come to all deserving children was an epiphany for me and one that has shaped my Christmas-keeping in the decades since.

The Irish have a beautiful custom of having the youngest child light a candle in the window on Christmas Eve, lest Christ should come in the guise of a stranger.  I count the strangers I have met during this time of year to be among my most treasured gifts.

One year we were able to connect with a woman we read about in The Inquirer.  She lead a group of fearless females who stood on the corner in their neighborhood with their mops and brooms to reclaim it from the drug dealers, and she often provided sanctuary to a dozen or more children in her home.

Then there was the mother of the family we had adopted through the Visiting Nurses Association who selflessly offered a sleeping bag that she had requested to another mother who showed up at the center because she had nothing to give to her little ones.

I generally avoid the mall as much as possible, but one year I was approached there by a stranger as I was enjoying a snack after a fruitful search for flannel sheets for my newly-separated father.  Within a half hour I had learned about her painful spiritual journey through divorce and the sexual abuse of her children.

Liberty Ministries Christmas
Volunteers with Liberty Ministries pack Christmas gifts for inmates.

That same year, my family traveled into Philadelphia for a performance of The Nutcracker.  A young woman struck up a conversation with me (I am an avowed introvert and rarely initiate such encounters) as we waited on the platform at Market East for the R5 to take us home.  Our conversation continued until she got off at the stop before us.  She was a recovering drug addict trying to put her life back together.  Her grandfather was dying in a nursing home in the area, and friends were taking her to visit him.  He had believed in her even when she didn’t believe in herself, she explained.

This year the world was too much with me, and I feared that Christmas might not come, “but it came just the same.”  It came through offering a ride to an elderly woman in front of me in the check-out line at the Dollar Tree store who would surely have struggled walking home with her cane and packages.  It came in attending a nursing home concert in which several members of my congregation performed.  It came shopping with a neighbor for an immigrant family facing its first Christmas without a mother/wife/daughter/sister.  It came helping to prepare nearly 2,000 brown paper packages for the inmates at Montgomery County Correctional Facility and having the privilege of joining others from Liberty Ministries in their distribution to the women who eagerly awaited them and gratefully received them.  It came with a real “baby Jesus” in the pageant this Sunday and our own costumed angels poignantly drawing us in as we mourned the slaughter of the Holy Innocents in a sleepy New England town.

Christmas.  The celebration of God with us invites us all to be open to possibility and opportunities—to “deliver” Christ to a waiting world, to serve Christ among the least of these, and to be surprised anew by the ways Christ comes to us in the midst of our isolation and loneliness, our longing for things to be different, our busyness and self-absorption, and our grief and pain, our hopes and fears.

Walking in the Way of Peace

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Last spring, the Eastern District and Franconia Conference Peace and Justice Committee sent invitations to our congregations for any member, young or old, to write reflections on “Walking in the Way of Peace.” We weren’t sure what response we would receive, but we offered this as one way for people to consider and express how their experience of following Jesus in everyday life led them to reconciling conversations, or choices supporting justice for vulnerable people, or perhaps what tensions they felt in trying to live Christ’s peace. As it turned out, the best submissions did speak of struggle and uneasiness – especially the conflicted feeling of desiring the well-being and fullness of life God intends for us and all creation, and cringing in our awareness of our own part in continuing the gap between God’s dream and our present reality. Thanks be to God that we are not left alone in acknowledging the gap, but live with the Spirit within us, moving among us to create peace that eclipses human understanding! May these two honest reflections feed our common hope in the Prince of Peace, who comes to us in weakness and poverty–that the glory of the Lord would be revealed, and all people would see it together.

Brenda ShellyWalking in the Way of Peace

by Brenda Shelly, Blooming Glen

I have not opened morning eyes to a place torn by bombs or spent a night without sleep due to violence.

But I long for peace in the devastated dark corners of this trembling globe.

I have not tasted the painful bitterness of losing a loved one to war.

But my heart aches for mothers and wives bearing such a profound and agonizing sting.

The mouths of my children have never asked for bread because they could not quiet great hunger from within.

But my soul aches when I remember the millions less fortunate.  The gentle, the innocent, the starving.  Parents with no way to comfort a dying child.

Never have I been unduly pressed by a governmental or cultural authority, leaving me powerless and desperate.

How I fear for those oppressed beyond any visible hope or release.

It has not been difficult for me to turn the other cheek in my privileged middleclass neighborhood with only the sound of wind chimes and the occasional spoiled dog next door to break the silence.

I’ve had no trouble integrating my nonviolent beliefs in the peaceful way of Jesus with the realities of my tiny, sheltered, personal world. I am sometimes ashamed by my pedestrian untested faith.  How can my opinions even matter when resting alongside such global suffering?

I have no answers.  Yet my heart burns for peace.  Every fiber of my being aches for justice, longs for reconciliation, and desperately hopes that somewhere deep inside each vengeful or frightened heart, we might someday find our common humanity. A humanity in which will can all to look into the eyes of the one we fear (the one we think we hate) and see our own eyes looking back.

Why "walking in the way of peace" requires grace

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Last spring, the Eastern District and Franconia Conference Peace and Justice Committee sent invitations to our congregations for any member, young or old, to write reflections on “Walking in the Way of Peace.” We weren’t sure what response we would receive, but we offered this as one way for people to consider and express how their experience of following Jesus in everyday life led them to reconciling conversations, or choices supporting justice for vulnerable people, or perhaps what tensions they felt in trying to live Christ’s peace. As it turned out, the best submissions did speak of struggle and uneasiness – especially the conflicted feeling of desiring the well-being and fullness of life God intends for us and all creation, and cringing in our awareness of our own part in continuing the gap between God’s dream and our present reality. Thanks be to God that we are not left alone in acknowledging the gap, but live with the Spirit within us, moving among us to create peace that eclipses human understanding! May these two honest reflections feed our common hope in the Prince of Peace, who comes to us in weakness and poverty–that the glory of the Lord would be revealed, and all people would see it together.

Michael Meneses

Why “walking in the way of peace” requires grace

by Michael A. Meneses, Wellspring Church of Skippack

People hurt people.  There is no exception.  There are a thousand and one ways in which we hurt one another.  And we’re all guilty.  We alienate and exclude, and distance ourselves; we give them the silent treatment or rudely dismiss them as inadequate and unimportant; we label and ridicule or nurture distain in our hearts for them; we assume superiority over them, we indulge in profiling and pre-judgment, we take advantage of them, manipulate, cheat, lie, and steal from them, and so-on and so-forth.  And so, many become wary, careful in relationships, afraid to get too close, fearful of vulnerability, quietly building invisible protective walls against others.

As such, given our present human condition, walking in the way of peace is contrary to our nature.  Why?  Upon eating the forbidden fruit, the human race declared war against God, as well as against each other.  Each of us in one form or another has declared ourselves a god in our own right in defiance of our Creator.  This is reflected in our power struggles with one another.  We want our own way.  When we don’t get it?  It’s fight or flight.  That’s our real human nature.

Because of this, walking in the way of peace actually begins with the honest acknowledgement that relationships are dangerous.  Conflict, disagreements and hurt, offenses-given and offenses-taken, are a regular occurrence in our day-to-day relations with others.  When relationships go awry, many find it much easier to drop the relationship (fight or flight) rather than stay committed to the way of love and its hard work of constructive engagement for peace building.  Thus, walking in the way of peace can be quite a challenge.

Furthermore, genuine peace is not merely the absence of open conflict between two parties.  For example, there can be much pain and agony between people even where there is no apparent conflict: silent hurt feelings, quiet misunderstandings, and self-righteous accusatory judgment, for example.  Real Biblical peace, Shalom, is actively concerned for one’s neighbor, for his or her fulfillment and completion, soundness and wholeness, serenity and tranquility, success and prosperity.  If two neighbors passively live side-by-side in distrust and with silent resentment toward each other, and never speak a word to each other unless necessary, there is no real shalom in that neighborhood.

Neither is walking in the way of peace a matter of becoming a doormat to avoid conflict.  Seeking wholeness, one-ness, and completeness for all, including one’s self, is a deliberate choice to stay connected and negotiate in and through conflict in order to find a harmonious solution as much as is humanly possible (Romans 12:18).  Being a deliberate intent to respect, care for, and consider the needs and interests of “the other,” while at the same time respecting one’s own needs and interests, walking in the way of peace maintains a self-integrity without fabricated self-effacement, a kind of false humility.  Avoiding conflict through disingenuous self-denial is motivated out of fear or cowardliness rather than genuine strength of character that is willing to stand for what is true, right, or good.  Such avoidance has little integrity and does little to address the actual source of conflict.

All this is not only difficult, it is next to impossible.  It takes super human strength.  It’s beyond human nature.  It therefore requires God’s grace, the work of the Holy Spirit within us, and a ready submission to Christ’s Lordship and Authority in our lives.  It requires God’s unconditional love working its way in and through us, toward others.  And though we don’t always get it right, we must always keep trying.  For it is the way God expands His Kingdom-Rule among us.

Ain't gonna study war no more

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by Duane Hershberger

I used to hear this little jingle during the 1964 presidential election: “In your heart you know he’s right, A-U-H-2-0.” Barry Goldwater ran against Lyndon Johnson.

Conservatives generally supported Goldwater. He appealed to a murky, inner voice that shouted fears of a nuclear bomb attack, Communism and the new era that began Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas, when President Kennedy was assassinated.

Even a little kid felt uneasy. Storms around the world threatened our peace and quiet. They told us the Communists could take over Vietnam. Then they’d take over Laos and Cambodia. On to the Philippines, Japan, India, Africa, Turkey, Europe. They’d leap at us from the east and they’d leap at us from the west and take over America. If we didn’t stop them in Vietnam, they’d soon be in Virginia. School kids girded up their loins for the leaping by crawling under their desks.

Kings and generals peddle fear to get people to fight their wars. Some people buy it. Some voters’ murky, inner fears hummed Goldwater’s little jingle, and he got votes.

Others were skeptical, so they voted for Johnson, and he won the election. But the war grew and grew until 50,000 Americans and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese died to keep the Communists and their leaping ways out of Virginia.

People in our church taught a Christian discipline called nonresistance. We wouldn’t go to war. We wouldn’t sue someone because of a bad debt. If someone hit you, you were supposed to turn the other cheek. The discipline is based on multiple biblical teachings to love your neighbors as yourselves, return good for evil and, “Thou shalt not kill.”

But lots of nonresistant, turn-the-other-cheek, plain Mennonite grownups were sympathetic to Goldwater and later with Nixon and wars on Communism. Kind words were even said about George Wallace, the famous segregationist governor who vowed to keep black people out of the University of Alabama in 1963. Conversations around lunch tables after church were often about the threats of Communists, hippies, the Black Panthers, riots, revolution and unease that something stable was slipping away.

It slipped away. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968. The Beatles, Kent State, Robert Kennedy’s assassination and Woodstock happened. In 1968, many young people voted no on grownups and war. But politicians toss vast hunks of red meat to people’s murky, inner fears and win elections. Inner fears didn’t go hungry during the 1960s. Young people lost the 1968 election.

Sunday school teachers and major league preachers told us that the opposite of faith is unbelief. But when you think about it, there is no such thing as unbelief. Everyone believes something. Unbelief is just the label for people who don’t believe what you believe. Calling it unbelief makes it sound sinister, and sinister begets fear.

The opposite of faith is fear—fear fed by the murky, inner voice that rings alarms about undocumented immigrants, Muslim terrorists, government takeovers of this and that, gay people, growing influence of minorities and declining churches. You can get otherwise reasonable people to believe boatloads of nonsense if you make them afraid.

A whole passel of religious people lives more by fear than faith. Kings, generals and presidents are slick at grabbing those murky, inner fears, wrapping them up in religious packages, then pushing them to voters like candy to a big-eyed kid with a sweet tooth.

Plain Mennonite people in bonnets and beards eat it up as much as anyone. Adolph Hitler used church language as cover to kill Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and lots of other people whom well-intentioned church people quietly distrusted. His soldiers went to Poland, France and Auschwitz with the words, “Gott Mit Uns” engraved on their belt buckles. That’s German for “God With Us” or “Emmanuel,” as in “O Come, O Come Emmanuel.”

And we must fight the things we’re afraid of, right? We must fight Communists because they might leap into Virginia. We must fight longhaired, British rock singers who wanna hold your hand because lots of people holding hands might lead to anarchy. We must fight to keep the blacks and whites separated because who knows what would happen if black people went to the university. Someday they might run a bank, and Lord only knows what could happen then. And so on. Feed those fears.

Kings and generals sit in their great houses and tell you war is about a grand cause. Millions of people in their small houses get rah-rahed up for the grand cause and march into battle. For the motherland. For freedom. To turn back evildoers. Kings and generals, with straight faces, will even tell you the grand war cause is peace.

But killing is personal. Its between you and the other guy. You have a gun and the other guy has a gun. He has a grand cause, you have a grand cause. One of you will die for the grand cause, but the killing is personal. Suppose the other guy isn’t a Christian. Kill him and score a run for your grand cause. But you took away every future opportunity for the other guy to receive God’s grace and become a disciple. And if you believe in a hell, you just sent him there permanently. What would you say to God if God asks you why you killed the guy when God was still speaking to him, drawing him into his love, perhaps preparing him for a great work? He did that with the Apostle Paul. Are you smart enough to answer God? Or, suppose the other guy is a Christian. What would you say if God asks you why you killed someone he gave life to and loved enough to die for? Are you smart enough to answer God?

You took way too much time to think about what you might say to God, so the other guy shoots you and you die. You are immediately in God’s eternal presence. The God who looks after the lilies and the sparrows will take care of the things left behind like your family and the grand cause. And the other guy has time left on his clock to repent and become bathed in God’s love. Brutal as it sounds, that’s how it shakes out. I’d hate to be in the other guy’s shoes when God stares him down and asks hard questions about that gunshot, but that’s not my problem anymore. This all goes against the way we usually think, but that’s because our brains have a problem.

Here’s the problem. Start with the Apostle Paul, a self-proclaimed terrorist who killed Christians because he was afraid they’d spoil the Jewish religion and way of life. Suppose an overzealous disciple picked up a rock and thunked him on the head the day before he set out for Damascus and met Jesus? The disciple goes home, happy that he eliminated an evil-doing, terrorist threat. The grand cause scored a run.

But thank God Paul lived long enough to tell us in his Romans letter that the key to faithful living is to change our thinking with a big attitude adjustment. Paul calls it a mind transformation. “Be transformed by renewing your mind,” Paul wrote some years after he wasn’t thunked. A mind with the inner, murky fear is the old way of living.

Thinking with a transformed, faith-focused mind is the new way of living. Think about what we would’ve missed with an ill-timed thunking of the Apostle Paul the next time you hear someone rant about killing off all the evildoers.

Fearful people almost bask in the threats. “Did you hear about the Muslim who … ?” “Did you hear about the Mexican gang in Los Angeles that … ?” “Did you hear about the kid who tried to pray in school … ?” “Did you hear … ?” And so on. And so on. Fearful people build walls and wage war.

Faithful people build schools, communities and roads, even in their enemy’s motherland. Faithful people build medical clinics for someone who speaks another language. Faithful people show hospitality to an adversary. Faithful people pick up a sword and beat it into a plowshare. Faithful people give a soft answer to turn away wrath. Faithful people do good to their enemies and, in so doing, heap coals of fire on their enemies’ heads. Paul said that, too. Faithful people act like they have eternal life and don’t need to squeeze every last beat out of their heart muscle. Faithful people even speak out like prophets when their brothers and sisters pay too much attention to those murky, inner fears.

Instead of trying to persuade other people to start believing in Jesus, we Christians should start believing Jesus. Jesus said to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Sometimes that’s easy and sometimes it’s hard. When it’s easy, you can do good all by yourself. But when it’s hard, you need faith. When it’s hard, you can do unto others as you would have them do to you only when you follow the North Star of a faith that calls you to a higher, better place of goodness. Pay attention to that murky, inner-fear voice and you just hit back and thunk over and over. And what do you say to God then?

Jesus said, “Don’t let your hearts be troubled.” Jesus said, “Don’t worry about food and clothes because your Father will take care of you.” Jesus said, “Don’t be afraid of the one who can kill your body; be afraid of the one who tries to take your soul.” Politicians push fear of Communism or terrorism to trade your soul for a vote to keep them in power. Even in church pews, the boatloads of fear nonsense goes on. Bless us with better BS detectors, dear God.

Most world religions have peace, consideration for others and respect for our brothers and sisters as their core belief. Look at the core beliefs of Hindus, Buddhists, Jews and Muslims. Peace, consideration for others and respect for our brothers and sisters is right at the center. Their core beliefs are about giving your time, talents and treasure to make this world a better place. Jesus was quoting well-known sayings from other religions when he said the words “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

Each of those religions also has its fringe of fear-minded people and the monuments they leave that soil their faith heritage. Those monuments include the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the New York Twin Towers, the Oklahoma City Federal Building, Oscar Romero’s tombstone, the Mumbai hotel and on and on.

Christians have peace, consideration for others and respect for our brothers and sisters as core beliefs. In fact, we have not only the belief, but the unique, living example of the Word from God, a child from heaven who grew up as one of us. Jesus was guided by the North Star of heaven’s truth about profound love. When he was challenged on it, he stood rooted on that North Star path. People who listened to their murky, inner fears instead of looking up to the North Star of their salvation pounded nails in his hands and hung him on a cross. But that wasn’t the story’s end. Fear’s triumph lasted three days. Faith and resurrection own every other day of history.

If any religion has an antidote—the steroids, hormones, hydrotherapy, ear plugs or whatever—to quiet the murky, inner-fear voice, it’s Christianity. You’d think we’d sit in our churches, look at the pictures of Christ healing the sick, Christ leading the lost sheep, Christ on the cross and Christ rising from the tomb and be the most courageous people in the world.

You’d think we’d sing such songs as “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God, a Bulwark Never Failing” and “Blessed Assurance, Jesus is Mine” and “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms” and “How Firm a Foundation” and “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me, I once was lost and now am found, was blind but now I see” and believe these profound truths and live joyful, courageous lives.

This is us. Love prevails. Because of the resurrection we lift all our time, talents and treasure to the cross. We joyfully give our bodies and lives completely to the cause of bringing God’s kingdom to earth. Christ is alive. Even death won’t stop the North Star of God’s love and light from shining its bright shine. There’s nothing to be afraid of. Nothing. We are those courageous people only when God transforms our minds.

Forgive us, dear Lord, for “Gott Mitt Uns.” Forgive us the wars we fight. Forgive us for paying attention to that murky, inner-fear voice. Lift our eyes today and guide us, like the Wise Men of old to the place where Jesus lives.

Duane Hershberger works with Habitat for Humanity and has helped pastor several Franconia Conference congregations. He worships at Germantown Mennonite Church in Philadelphia.

God@Work: A Persistent Morning Cue

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alarm clockby Brenda Shelly, Blooming Glen

I am an unapologetic snooze-button smacker.  It is my habit to set my alarm for 5:30 each morning just for the pleasure of slapping (and ignoring) it several times before I am forced to actually rise from my soft, warm bed. The snooze button is insistent, chirping at regular intervals to rouse me from sleep and I’ve noticed lately that one of the persistently obnoxious intervals has been occurring at exactly 6:06 a.m.

This may seem inconsequential (even daft) to a Lutheran, a Baptist, a Pentecostal, or a Presbyterian.  But last month in my foggy morning Mennonite mind, the association clicked. The beeping and the number have since been a recurrent morning cue, courtesy of the unrelenting connections in my brain.   I’d like to think this is God’s sense of humor tickling the synapses in my brain, though some may say He’s got no time for such nonsense.  Call me illogical, but I find Him to be very involved in the intricacies of my day; my mornings and waking are no exception.

So last month, the annoying beeping and the time on my clock spoke loudly and clearly, nudging me out of my morning mist and urging me to turn to page number 606 in the hymnal.

Since then, I’ve begun my days at 6:06 a.m. with a robust internal morning song.  Praise God from whom all blessings flow.  The song is in my heart and in my mind as I peel back the covers and try to find my footing on the carpet.  Praise Him all creatures here below.  At the sound of my steps stumbling toward the shower, Jasmine the cat begins to howl a morning greeting from downstairs. Praise Him above ye heavenly host. So early in the morning, my mind is drawn to the countless blessings I receive each day.  Who am I, mere mortal, given the opportunity to praise my Heavenly Father in the company of heavenly beings?  Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. There is none like Him.  And it resonates in the very core of my being before the warm spray of water even hits me in the face.

God works in large sweeping movements leaving his indelible mark on hearts and lives.  But his glory is also found blossoming from the tiny cracks of damaged sidewalks and in the ordinary details we too often fail to appreciate.  His interest and involvement in our lives exceed our imaginations, and I venture to suggest He would love for us to discover blessings far surpassing those for which we stoop to ask. Hallelujah.  Amen.

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Listen to Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow at last year’s Mennonite Church USA convention.

God@Work: Singing a New Song

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by Sheila R. Duerksen, Blooming Glen

How does one who was sheltered in the arms of a loving family, taught of God as she is taught to walk, surrounded by faith as by an embryonic fluid — how does one such as I not know that God loves her?

In a crisis of overwhelming fears, I came to sudden clarity that I did not really trust Him, and this was rooted in not truly believing that He loves me.  Yes, I believed He loved the world, in a general, beneficent Creator sort of way.  But what interest did He have in me?  I knew I had been sheltered and protected, and for that I was grateful.  But I did not believe that He treasured me, and I did not believe that I should even expect that kind of attention.  I should be thankful for what I have and be content.  But there was a yearning in me I could not name.

I did not realize that thankfulness would unlock the greatest surprise of my life:  a God, on the edge of His seat, a catch in His throat, His muscles taut as He restrained Himself to honor my free will, and waited…waited…waited for me, His beloved.  A God who longed for me and fought for me and craved an intimate relationship with me.  I never imagined a God like that, His Words a-quiver with life, a startlingly real God of visions and dreams and singing a new song.

During this season of growing thankfulness came the songs.  Suddenly, like rain showers, words and music began to fall into my mind.  I never knew when the next song would come.  I did not deliberately try to write them; they would arrive out of the clear blue, while I was jogging or in the shower or at the kitchen sink.  They arrived while I was sleep deprived and desperately juggling the needs of two young children while drowning in the mire of household tasks.  I simply opened up and received.

This was shocking and delightful to me.  I had never written a song in my life, and it had never occurred to me to try.  Still, I had always loved the feel and tang of words, and found joy in music, paying very close attention to the songs which moved me.  The mystery of music called to me.

Could it be that God…knew me? Cared about me?  He knew that, when I was lost in the worship of thankfulness that January morning, my spirit suddenly stretched out long toward Him… I wanted to sing.  I wanted my own words to sing.  But I could not ask for such a thing.  You aren’t deserving of that.  And if you want it too badly, you will not get it.  You will be disappointed.  But somehow grace was stronger than fear, and He heard my faintest soul whisper, the deepest desire of my heart, what I did not even know was hidden in me.  He gave me what I was afraid to ask for.

This was a God who knew that the hurts incurred on my journey through the world had shaken me and battered me.  I had put away my poetic nature, my creativity, and my sensitivity because they did nothing to protect me from the blows.  I became jaded and suspicious, because innocence made me a target.  I closed the door on dreams because they weren’t practical or responsible.  But He knew who He had created me to be.  And He was calling out to that girl.  For the first time in my life, I heard Him.

He has answered my deepest questions and my deepest longings by His love for me.  I see His hands all over the events of my life, weaving the joy and pain together into something new, always something new.  Fear and disappointment cannot withstand the astonishing tenderness and mercy of my Father’s relentless pursuit of me; the creator and caretaker of all that exists is also the Lover of my soul.

Making peace in the neighborhood

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by Samantha E. Lioi, Minister of Peace and Justice

When congregational leaders of Nations Worship Center (NWC) chose to purchase a large old commercial building on Ritner St. in South Philadelphia, they couldn’t have guessed the disruption this would be in their lives—and the lives of the folks in that neighborhood.  The building was once home to the Knights of Columbus and a catering business.  Residents remember attending Sweet Sixteen parties and wedding receptions held there years ago.  But for the last 10 years, it’s been vacant.  When the neighbors and neighborhood association heard of NWC’s plans, Pastor Beny Krisbianto and others began hearing rumors of discontent and surprising misunderstandings.  Some worried that the congregation would allow homeless folks to stay there.  They feared this possible change in the human landscape of the place.  Many were concerned about the parking spaces worshipers would occupy.  Some saw the appearance of Nations Worship congregants mostly from Southeast Asia and assumed the building would become a Buddhist temple.

It’s an established neighborhood, a predominantly Italian neighborhood.  When I heard this, I was angry and embarrassed.  I’m half Italian, and I feel a strong identification with much of Italianness as I know it.  And, sometimes my people get carried away.  There’s of course the stereotype of fist-shaking bluster, a bark that is much worse than our bite.  In my personal and familial experience, that stereotype has been pretty true.  I remember my dad getting angry and yelling about some small thing, and the next minute he’d be whistling a happy tune around the house.  I’m not exaggerating.  Used to drive my mother crazy.

But then there’s the bite.  I admit, in some ways I’m confused by the strong reaction in the neighborhood against Nations Worship.  The Italians in my life are warm, generous, passionate about most of life.  On the other hand, I have noticed a cultural tendency to take care of our own and be wary of outsiders.  Let’s be honest: most tightly-knit communities with a history in a certain place are this way.  I’ve heard stories of Northerners moving South and never feeling accepted, after many years.  As human beings, we often give hospitality that is only skin-deep.

Then there’s this weird dynamic that many minorities experience of becoming like people who were once their enemies.  It shouldn’t be this way, but it happens over and over again.  It wasn’t so long ago that immigrants from Italy who spoke English with a strong accent were a significant percentage of Northeastern urban populations in the U.S.  My great-grandfather was one of them.  Donato Lioi (known in the States as Dan) left his home country and moved to Newark, NJ as a teenager.  Like many  immigrants, he worked as a common laborer in construction.  On Sunday mornings he would tell his young grandson (my dad), “David…meta le’Meeta d’Pressa…Walter Frankize…”—his own pronunciation of famed journalist Walter Cronkite.  My dad grew up understanding his grandfather’s Engliano as if it were an official language of the UN.  It was normal, everyday family life for him.

Now, I lean in to listen and understand English spoken with an Indonesian accent as I meet with my brothers and sisters from Nations Worship Center.  I respect their hard work learning English, and their desire to be a positive presence in whatever neighborhood they find themselves.  As they face resistance, they are not so unlike Italians who faced labels like WOP and prejudice from those who’d been here longer.  And because they are in a vulnerable position as new and recent immigrants, they do not respond to this resistance with clenched fists and a stubborn refusal to cooperate.  In some respects, they have no choice but to cooperate.

It’s understandable that folks would ask about parking; they’ve been used to parking in the unused spots for years.  It’s quite possible that many of the neighbors had never met an Indonesian Christian before.  But when Beny and other leaders—accompanied by several Anglo brothers and sisters—attended a public neighborhood meeting, they were saddened and somewhat frightened by the yelling and the accusations that faced them.  They wanted to be a blessing to their neighbors; how could they explain themselves in a way that would be heard?  Since that night, leaders of NWC have met several other neighborhood residents who have welcomed them and said they’re glad to have them around.  How to relate in loving ways with those who are still unsatisfied with their presence is an ongoing question, one they are living one conversation at a time.

It’s understandable that, having established ourselves in a place, having developed routines and deep relationships there, we want to protect all that.  It’s human.  But Christ calls us further than that.  In Christ there is no Jew or Greek, no Italian or Indonesian, male or female, citizen or non-citizen.  That can be a tough pill to swallow.  But Jesus’ teachings usually are.