Faithful Partnership

A group from our church will be travelling once again to Cuba the end of next month. Our license from our government will expire soon after, so we elected to make a second trip not quite two years after the last one. I'm to be the translator on this trip, and I have more than a little anxiety about this as my spoken Spanish is still limited. However, my middle son has been practicing with me and has encouraged me greatly. And I am good at not giving myself enough credit for what I do know, an unfortunate legacy from a mother who wanted to be sure I did not think too highly of myself (it does say that in the Bible). She succeeded in her goal.

In any case, we are returning to visit our Presbyterian sisters and brothers in Cuba, and we will have an opportunity to spend more time in conversation this time as we will not be travelling to the center of the island on this trip. Last night I read (in Spanish)an article about church partnerships by the pastor of the church where we will be staying in La Habana, and as a result I'm most anxious to meet her and talk with her. She is obviously a woman of immense faith and deep wisdom. One comment in particular struck me, and I plan on using it to explain why we are making this trip (especially to our family):

"I believe that what is most valuable in our relations is that, in great measure, we have managed to overcome the barriers that our governments have erected between our two nations. We must keep on walking if we truly wish to make a prophetic witness in our faithfulness to the Gospel we proclaim."

To be a Christian means to reach out in love across the barriers the world constantly tries to erect between us--because we follow the one who constantly reached out across such barriers, and who also reached out to us.

Grace and Peace,
Donna Sue

Written on the Heart

I was privileged to preach at my home church this morning. Our pastor was absent and asked me to fill in while she was gone. While I have become fairly accustomed to being a substitute preacher in other places, it still feels strange to take that role in the church I have belonged to for over 25 years. I chose to talk about the prophet Jeremiah. My pastor was right--it was almost harder to rework a previous sermon than it would have been to simply start with a blank page. But I managed, by the grace of God, and the congregation was more than gracious in response.

As I struggled to find God's word for this morning, I was helped greatly by Eugene Peterson's introduction to the book of Jeremiah in The Message. He pointed out that Jeremiah lived in a time in some ways not so different from our own. There was war in the Middle East, and life for Jeremiah's people in tiny Judah was changing radically--much as life seems to be changing radically around us in our own time. Jeremiah tried repeatedly to call his people back to an intimate relationship with God that would sustain them in the tough times they faced. But like us, the people of Jeremiah's day were so caught up with the struggles of their everyday lives that they found it hard to spend the time required to have an intimate relationship with God. I know I struggle each day to make time in the midst of the day's challenges to spend quality time with God. So I suppose in large part I was preaching to myself.

I love Jeremiah's proclamation that I used as the basis for the sermon: "The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.... I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people." Jeremiah 31:31-34. My husband probably explained it best in his children's sermon as he told the children that learning something by heart means you always have it with you. And then he taught them the Shema: Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is one. You shall love the Lord, Your God, with all your heart, and with all your mind and with all your strength. I can't think of a better way to describe an intimate relationship with God, the kind of relationship that can sustain us through whatever challenges come to us in this life.

Grace and Peace,
Donna Sue

Civility in Action

On Wednesday this week I was privileged to see a Congressional Student Forum sponsored by the Institute for Civility in Government, which was co-founded by my friends, Rev. Cassandra Dahnke and Rev. Tomas Spath. I had heard about these events and even written about them in the book Cassandra and Tomas and I wrote together, Reclaiming Civility in the Public Square: Ten Rules That Work, but this was my first chance to experience one. It was a blessing. U.S. Representatives John Carter and Henry Cuellar came and answered questions from college students for an hour at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor. The students were well prepared and asked good questions. Carter and Cuellar responded with thoughtful answers. As one of the students later said, it was apparent they were smart and had thought a lot about their work. While these two men obviously disagreed on a number of issues,they did so with civility and respect. It was good to see that this is still possible in our "Red State - Blue State" society. As I have reflected on this event I have thought about the Psalm that says how good it is when brothers live together in peace. Knowing how to disagree with each other with civility is important. The reality is that the opposite of civility is not incivility, but the chaos and violence that result when we dehumanize our opponents so that attacking or killing them comes to seem rational. In God's eyes we are all equal, and all of us have fallen short of the glory of God. A good reason to maintain civility when we talk with the rest of God's children.

Grace and Peace,
Donna Sue

Passionate moderation

I have been privileged to direct the local Interfaith Conversations group since my pastor convinced me to start it up after I graduated from seminary almost five years ago. We had our first fall meeting last night, and it was extraordinary as so many of these meetings have been. We talked about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict using the vehicle of Richard North Patterson's novel, Exile, which is a beautifully crafted story that manages to convey deep sadness and the complexity of the situation in a way that sometimes only fiction can accomplish. Thus it was that our group of twenty mostly Christians of various denominations gathered in a Presbyterian church in central Texas and listened to a Jewish American and a Muslim American talk about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict from their own unique personal perspectives. Those of us who had read the novel spoke of the deep sadness this fictional story engendered about such a persistently violent reality. One thing we all seemed to agree upon is the need for moderates to speak out--with passion as one group member eloquently expressed it.

Thus I was delighted to open the Austin paper this morning and read of a demonstration by moderates in Austin yesterday, which the organizer called a Muslim Peace March. After the march, the leader of a local Muslim community center quoted the Quran: "Whoever kills a person unjustly, it is as though he has killed all mankind." Indeed. Worth remembering as we near the sixth anniversary of the 9-11 attacks in this country and as the violence in the Middle East and around the world shows no signs of abating. Each person lost to violence is an irreplaceable loss. And the impact of their loss spreads out in ways that can never be fully calculated.

Passionate moderation is a healthy alternative to hand-wringing. Those heroes such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mother Teresa who have gone before us have demonstrated that one passionate person can make a huge difference.

Grace and Peace,
Donna Sue

Teaching

I was reading from the Epistle of James this morning in Eugene Peterson's The Message, and was transfixed by the beginning of Chapter 3: "Don't be in any rush to become a teacher, my friends. Teaching is highly responsible work. Teachers are held to the strictest standards. And none of us is perfectly qualified. We get it wrong nearly every time we open our mouths." That certainly sums it up. If only I could achieve the perfection in the classroom I have in mind as I prepare. But that will happen if ever only for fleeting, rare moments. And any such perfection will likely be due as much to the students' efforts as to mine. And to God's grace. I have always been blessed with the most amazing students, eager, hard-working and very forgiving of the teacher. I just wish I could be the kind of teacher Jesus was. Now there's a role model for teaching. After another late night getting ready for class tomorrow, it's time to get some rest and pray that God will be with me in the classroom and with my students as we learn from each other. For that is what keeps me going.

Grace and Peace,
Donna Sue

Of mice and women

We discovered a mouse problem in the pantry where we keep the pet food. I refused to use the traditional mouse trap, but instead prevailed upon my husband to try a humane alternative. So far we've trapped two and taken them out to the edge of our property to release them. It turns out in addition to cat and dog food they love peanut butter. The mice and I have something in common. Actually I realized today that a love of peanut butter is not the only thing the mice and I have in common. My husband went to the same pantry this morning and pulled out the picnic basket to use as a prop in his Children's Sermon at church. He thought it felt a little heavy, and when he removed the lid, he discovered a mouse nest, made from the material of the cloth napkins, two of which had perfect circles eaten through them.

He discovered the reason the basket was heavy is that the mice had carried innumerable pieces of pet food to the basket and filled each of the plastic goblets and coffee mugs to the brim. To me, the strangest part of this was that they stored their purloined food stores right next to the big sacks of pet food. It seemed to me it would have been easier to just eat from the lavish banquet that was provided rather than hoarding stores right next door. But then I realized how much I am like these mice. Like them, and like the Israelites in the wilderness, I am reluctant to rely entirely on the bounty that God promises and regularly makes available to me. God prepares a table before me in the presence of my enemies, but I want the security of having plenty of food in the pantry. I become anxious when material possessions are low or threatened.

One of my seminary professors, Dr. David Jensen, writes in an article on Globalization about the difference between our fast food culture and the abundance God provides in Holy Communion. We gobble our fast food as if fearful that someone will take it. But at God's table there is always room for one more and always plenty of food and drink to share. Too often we see the world in terms of scarcity, when God offers us abundance. I thought of that and of the mice as we took communion this morning.

Grace and Peace,
Donna Sue

Integrity

We talked in my Business Ethics class this past week about integrity, and the students knew instinctively what it means. One suggested it meant truthfulness, another being genuine, and I offered from the dictionary unbroken, whole. I told them about getting to hear Parker Palmer, author of Let Your Life Speak and A Hidden Wholeness, speak at a conference in Dallas on the challenge of maintaining our integrity in the workplace. That is not an easy task.

As I was reviewing the Bible texts on the lectionary for tomorrow morning in preparation for being the layleader in worship, I realized that Hebrews 13:7-8 (from Eugene Peterson's The Message)offers a great definition of integrity as well as the best example I can think of. "There should be a consistency that runs through us all. For Jesus doesn't change--yesterday, today, tomorrow, he's always totally himself." Now that's integrity! I only hope to be able to approximate that standard in my life, but I keep trying. Fortunately God possesses infinite patience.

Grace and Peace,
Donna Sue