Journey to Justice Day, Seattle

Last Saturday I had the opportunity to attend the annual Journey to Justice Day here in Seattle, a gathering of all the current JustFaith groups in the area. I've posted about JustFaith before; quite simply, it's absolutely the best parish program I've ever run into, and as far as formation in Social Justice goes, there's nothing else even in the running. It includes prayer; two retreats, at beginning and end; DVD and video presentations; guest speakers; field trips (called "Border Crossings"); book study (10-12 over the length of the program); and connections with solid Church institutions (the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, Catholic Relief Services, Maryknoll, Bread for the World, and Pax Christi) -- all over a period of 30 weeks of sessions, each 2 1/2 hours long, during which time participants develop a sense of shared purpose and community. Whew!

Journey to Justice Day is one of the Border Crossings, an "immersion experience" during which the JF participants meet with people involved in a CCHD project -- low-income people themselves -- explain what problem their project addresses and how they go about it. Here in the Seattle area we have so many JustFaith groups that the Archdiocese organizes Journey to Justice Day as an event for ALL the groups, and invites ALL the various CCHD groups to attend and explain their programs.

What a collection of great programs! Included were Women's Justice Circles, Latinos for Community Transformation, the Lopez Community Land Trust, the Tenants Union, and Women's Housing, Equality, and Enhancement League (WHEEL), among a few others. I was so impressed by all those who came to represent their groups... all low-income, and so many of them women. I admired their dedication, their strength, and their ability to articulate their situation and what they were trying to do. This was not only an eye-opener for so many of the JustFaith attendees, and an exposure to what institutional change was all about... seeing and experiencing those women was also something that broke through a lot of stereotypes about poor people.

My personal favorite was WHEEL, an organization made up of homeless and formerly homeless women. Two of them, Tammy and Naomi, described some of their activities... organizing what they call Women in Black, vigils for homeless people who die as victims of violence... the Homeless Remembrance Project, installing sculpture and "Leaves of Remembrance" in public places, to keep the issue of homelessness before the public eye... and Tent City 3 & 4, which are temporary shelters for the homeless that move every 2-4 months to different communities in the area that agree (not always without dissention) to host them. These and other projects are decided upon, organized, and then carried out by the women themselves, and with allies they make within the wider community.

So refreshing, so inspiring, and so powerful!

Ever Elusive Peace?

I subscribe to several blogs, but am usually so back-logged by events at the parish and hospital that I usually fail keep up with them. And usually when I do read them, I start with the most out-of-date items, which guarantees that I'll always be behind. But today, I opened my most recent item from the National Catholic Reporter, a baptismal homily by Bishop Gumblelton of Detroit, which actually dealt with the topic of peace. You can view the whole homily here, but here are a couple of choice excerpts:

….We are followers of Jesus, the one who rejects all violence for any reason whatsoever. How many of us would even remember that today, January 16th, is the 20th anniversary of a great tragedy in the world, when we went to war against Iraq, 20 years ago today.

For six weeks -- 42 days and 42 nights -- we bombed Iraq so that we destroyed all of their water purifications systems, their sewage treatment plants, so that they no longer would have clean water. We did that deliberately.

Besides killing thousands of people in those bombings, we destroyed their access to what is necessary for life. We destroyed the whole infrastructure of that country and for 12 1/2 years afterwards, we imposed an embargo that prevented them from ever rebuilding.

Then again, we went to war again in 2003, and we’re still at war 20 years later. Where has been the Christian cry denouncing that war? How many of us have cried out against it and demanded that it end?

…Right after that first Persian Gulf War -- that war lasted only 12 weeks and yet did such terrible devastation -- in March of 1991, John Paul II published an encyclical letter called Centesimus Annus, a letter that was a recounting of 100 years of Catholic social teaching about justice, about peace and how to bring justice and peace into our world.

In the document, John Paul says: “I myself, on the occasion of the recent tragic war in the Persian Gulf repeated the cry, ‘Never again war. No, never again war.’” He was repeating the cry of Pope Paul VI that Paul made at the United Nations in 1965 imploring the nations of the world to reject war. “Never again war,” John Paul says, “I repeated that cry because war destroys the lives of innocent people,” and we refuse to even number those innocent people who have been killed through this war in Iraq, and now this war in Afghanistan.

Innocent people in the hundreds of thousands have been killed during these past 20 years by that war, but then, John Paul also says, “It throws into upheaval the lives of those who do the killing.” …. You can’t learn to kill unless you do something to yourself to dehumanize yourself. That’s how you do it, but you’re not healed from that easily.

So, we have failed, it seems to me, to be the light of Christ. Each of us must take some responsibility for what has gone on for 20 years now and continues to go on and we must, it seems to me, if we really want to follow Jesus, to be a light to the nations. We must say no to this war and to every war to follow Jesus.

I can’t tell you exactly what you must do. I have to keep on thinking about what I must do, but all of us somehow -- if we’re going to be the light to the nations that Jesus calls us to be.

“As God sent Me, I send you,” Jesus said. “Receive the Holy Spirit so that you can carry on My work.” Each of us has to determine how I will more faithfully follow the way of Jesus, to work against violence and war, and to bring peace to our world. …

I spent a few days last week listening to portions of several speeches of Martin Luther King Jr., including one on nonviolence given to the American Jewish Committee. I've also begun a new book, Jesus and Nonviolence, A Third Way, by Walter Wink, which our JustFaith group will be studying soon. This short review of Wink's book by Jon Pahl summarizes his thoughts well:

Wink avoids apocalyptic doom and succinctly traces the biblical, theological, and practical contours of militant Christian nonviolence. Nonviolence, according to Wink, is an alternative to either of the "natural" responses to evil--fight or flight. Jesus' "third way," as Wink sketches it, neither mirrors the violence of power as domination nor flees the scene in passive submission. The third way seeks rather to engage the "powers and principalities" with imaginative forms of civil disobedience, community organizing, and public ritual. These nonviolent means seek not simply to replace power with power but to move closer to the democratic ideal of the rule of law in which justice is built into the fabric of human arrangements, and where human flourishing is structurally insured for the greatest number possible.

"Nonviolence" is such an inadaquate-sounding word for a difficult yet dynamic force. As Wink's book points out in its first pages, "There have been some remarkable success stories of nonviolent struggle around the world recently." After citing Corazon Aquino in the Phillipines, the Solidarity movement in Poland, nonviolent general strikes overthrowing seven different Latin American dictators, and 14 different nonviolent revolutions in 1989-90 alone, he states: "These revolutions involved 1.7 billion people. If we total all the nonviolent movements of the twentieth century, the figure comes to 3.4 billion people, and again, most were successful. And yet there are still people that insist that nonviolence doesn't work!"

I wish our own U.S. government could get that message. What kind of force do we want to be in the world?

March For Life, 2011

Tuesday I participated in the annual March For Life in the Washington State capital of Olympia. This was the first time I've made it to the event, and I felt more motivated this year because abortions are once again on the increase. The (above) website for the event indicates that there were about 10,000 people there, and I wouldn't dispute the figure.

The march was preceeded by two Masses at St. Michael's Church, one for youth presided over by Bishop Tyson, and the other for adults presided over by our newly installed Archbishop Sartain. Afterwards, we did march, from St. Michaels to the steps of the Capitol, where an hour-long rally was held, with various speakers, including legislators. There was not enough room on the steps of the building, so we overflowed onto other areas, and unfortunately I couldn't really hear the speakers very well. But I watched the crowd, read all the signs, and in general enjoyed the festivities.

And it WAS festive. The speeches didn't have an angry tone at all, and the crowd was upbeat. The signs, purposefully worded and strong, were generally positive and not pejorative. The only angry people seemed to be the 13 or 14 counter-protestors across the street, who deliberately intended to be disruptive by making a lot of noise during the Archbishop's opening prayer; but the large crowd just ignored them, and they soon stopped.

It was a good event. My only criticism would be that I saw few signs, and heard little or nothing spoken (that I could hear), that made connections to other issues -- like the death penalty, war, or the defunding of programs for low-income women. Those connections HAVE to be made, in my opinion, if the Pro-Life movement wishes to grow.

I would recommend the event, and of course the cause. If I go next year, I'll carry my own sign, that makes connections.

A Light to the Nations

Last Wednesday night, after a few days away to help finally clear my head and get some rest, I came back to join with several other parishioners at our Social Justice Commission meeting. Since I'm a staff member, I'm usually a very calm presence at the meeting, and my intent is normally to encourage everyone else, hopefully to draw out the ideas and commitment of others there, and to support what the group chooses to do.

Instead, I found myself getting rather passionate -- about ADVOCACY. It's something that I had agreed to take on, but of course in order to do it effectively I need to work with others in the parish who are interested in it. And frankly, I haven't found very many parishioners who seem to have much interest in it.

So...I found myself saying things about it at the meeting, much more than I usually do. The other members who were there are friends and are supportive of justice efforts, and so it was not an awkward or unpleasant experience. But afterwards, it made me dig inside more deeply.

I knew that it was my turn to preach this past weekend, and that it also happened to be the weekend of the holiday for Martin Luther King Jr. So for inspiration, I pulled out a CD that I had, containing excerpts of some of his speeches, and played them over and over, when I was in the car traveling from one place to another.

The following homily is what resulted.

Homily for the Second Sunday of Ordinary Time (A)

Good morning. It is once again an honor and privilege to be with you today, to share a few thoughts about our scripture. Last Sunday we closed our observance of the Christmas season by celebrating the Baptism of Jesus, which also began for us our season Homily for the 2nd Sunday of Ordinary Time, during which we journey along with Jesus in his public life and ministry. We're still at the very beginning of that journey, and our gospel selection today contains the testimony of John the Baptist that Jesus is the one; Jesus is the Lamb of God, the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit; Jesus is the one John has been waiting for, preparing the way for, and the one that he then urges his own disciples to follow. It's very fitting that this gospel is matched with a very beautiful first reading from Isaiah 49, when God says to the people of Israel, "You are my servant Israel, in whom I will be glorified." And of course these words do echo down to us through the centuries, not only as followers of Jesus but as servants too.

It is no small thing to be God’s servants, and our world is by far a better place when we do our duties well. These duties for our children and youth are those of listening to the voice of God through their parents and in their hearts, and working faithfully to get a proper education. These duties for our young adults and older, are those of listening to the calling of God to choose a proper vocation, one that faithfully uses the talents and opportunities God has given us. And these duties, still later, if it is our calling, are those of marrying and loving well, and faithfully raising children, and working hard to support and guide them. And then there are the servant duties we all have to love and honor God with our lives, to worship regularly, to be loving and charitable toward those in need. I have been here at St. Bridget now for 27 years, and while I don't know everyone's name, I do know that you are good and generous people, and I have loved being with you all this time, and I hope I have a few more years to go! I know that you do try to be faithful to these servant duties and many more, especially those of education and work and family and charity.

But today I would like to hold up for you -- and to hold up for myself as well -- other duties that God is calling forth from his people Israel in our scripture today. It is true that God calls Israel his servant people. But God does not stop there. God does not stop there. God adds, "It is too little a thing that you should be my servant... I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth." A light to the nations. Salvation, reaching to the ends of the earth. God's calling for us does not end with our schooling, our families, our jobs, or even our outreach to our neighbor in need. Jesus came not just to his Jewish brothers and sisters, to Bethlehem, or Nazareth, or Galilee, or Jerusalem. Jesus went to Capernaum, and the gentile area across the sea of Galilee. Jesus healed the Roman centurion's servant. And Jesus died for all people, to conquer sin and death for all of humankind. And we come together today as his disciples, called to follow him, called to be a light to the NATIONS!

My confess my heart is somewhat heavy these days. It started just before the end of the year, when I got a little e-mail from Rev. Sally Kinney, the pastor of Community Ministry at Seattle Mennonite Church, in the Lake City area. They're the community that started the Sunday dinner ministry to the homeless that St. Bridget has been involved with for the last couple of years, and I know some of you help with that ministry -- I think it's on the second Sunday of the month. She was writing to her friends in ministry about the troubles with our state budget -- the fact that there's so little money, that programs WILL be cut, especially programs for the poor. She wrote: "This is a difficult time, and there are no easy or sure answers. What we must do is continue to tell our state representative and senators that this is simply too much pain to bear and they must do whatever they can possibly do to minimize it." And she ended by saying, "We will all have to do even more than we are now, to help our neighbors."

And then just Friday, you may have seen this front-page headline in our Seattle Times: "HEALTH BUDGET CUTS GRIM FOR PEOPLE ON THE EDGE." Inside, the paper outlined the problems facing the state, and the cuts we are facing. And that's not all of course; as we all know, the national scene is very difficult too.

It's not just that the economy is bad, that unemployment is high, and that the poor are hurting more than you and I are. There's a collective feeling afoot in our land that budgets need to be brought in line, and that therefore government programs must be cut. And of course, it’s true that you cannot endlessly sail the ship of government on a sea of red ink. But in an environment where the only choices are to cut programs, those who have no voice will suffer the most. Those who are already vulnerable will be even more at risk. And then, what becomes of our collective soul?

I'm proud of our parish charity and outreach. I am happy that we reached out to Tent City, that our Christmas giving tree helped out so many youth at the Orion Center and families at Sacred Heart Shelter and individuals coming to the Francis House. I think it's wonderful that we collect food every Sunday for those in need through our St. Vincent de Paul. But all of our charity will be more than undone by the cuts that are coming in services to the poor.

We are called to be a light to the nations! A light to our community, our state, our country. Our calling as Christians goes beyond our own life, beyond our own family, and even beyond our charity. Our calling includes ADVOCACY. Advocacy for those who have no voice. Advocacy for those on the edge whose health services are being cut. Advocacy for the homeless whose numbers will increase over the next year, and for those mentally ill on our streets whose services will likely be cut. Advocacy for the immigrants in our midst, who will be increasingly vulnerable to exploitation, even as they struggle to provide for their families. And my experience, unfortunately, is that however generously as a parish we reach out to others in charity, as a parish we have very little we can point to as advocates.

One parishioner whom I respect very much told me after our Saturday evening Mass that she “felt scolded” by that. Please understand, I’m not scolding you! If I have anyone to scold, it’s myself. But I admit, I AM trying to light a fire here today. We are a fine servant people, but our times call for more. Our scripture today reminds us that it is too little a thing to be a servant people, we are given to be a LIGHT TO THE NATIONS. And to be a light requires a fire, a passionate love, especially a love for those Jesus loved: the poor and the forgotten. I would hate for us to miss our calling. There is no better community in the city of Seattle for this task than St. Bridget. We are well-educated. We have strong families. We have a loving and generous heart. And many of us are well-regarded in our professions, with influence in wider circles. We can do this!

I find it sadly ironic… this Tuesday I will be joining several others from St. Bridget and with Catholics across the state for the annual March for Life in Olympia. And as we advocate for the recognition of the rights of the unborn, we should all be sadly aware that abortion in our country is once again on the increase. And that should be no surprise -- for if poor women have less available medical care, less community support, fewer choices for their families, there will be more abortions.

I confess I don't have the answer. However, my New Year's Resolution is that I will work hard to encourage all of parish outreach efforts to include a component of Advocacy. I ask each one of us, as we encounter Jesus in our Eucharist today, to ask the Lord how we can better be a light to our community, and to our world, especially on behalf of those he loved so much.

Deacon Denny Duffell, 1/16/2011

Back on the Planet

I've taken an unanticipated break from blogging, but I suspect things will come a bit more regularly now. The week before Christmas, my father-in-law died. He was quite a man -- a leader in the Spokane community, someone who truly made an obvious difference that anyone from Spokane over the last 35 years would notice. His name was King Cole, and he was the orginator and moving force behind Expo '74, the World's Fair that put Spokane on the map, and changed forever the shape of the city. The fair had an environmental theme, and the whole effort included cleaning up the river and the downtown area, leaving a beautiful park and community center on the island where formerly there had been a mess of railroad tracks, surrounded by urban blight. There are too many links to list here; just go to Google and type in "King Cole Spokane" to see some of them.

The holiday season has ended, but now the dead gray of winter and the endless Seattle rains are now upon us. I usually don't mind, but frankly, my heart is heavy with the condition of our state and country. I'm usually a very optimistic person, but in the state of Washington, there is very little good news if you're poor and in poor health, if you're homeless, if you're mentally ill, or in general if you rely on any kind of government assistance. The state is cutting its budget and services drastically, by over 20%. California is as bad, Oregon is worse, along with several other states.

I don't feel guilty to have a job, to be in (reasonably) good health, or to have a roof over my head. But I do feel that I have failed somehow, when the communities that I am a part of are allowing this to happen. In Washington state, voters decided to end a tax on soda, candy, gum, and other such items. They turned down a proposal to tax the wealthiest Washingtonians to help relieve the budget. And they voted to require ANY NEW TAX LEGISLATION to be put to a vote of the people, and to require a super-majority to pass it. Sometimes I am ashamed to live here. I will have to do/say something about this, even if it costs something.

More to come, believe me.