fleshmarket

For the Coracle, magazine of the Iona Community:

Maybe the way to write this up is to put the immediate story up front - the finding of common ground on the borders between north and south, rich and poor. Maybe with this 'local' intro for Scottish readers...

In Edinburgh, mystery writer Ian Rankin came across a street called Fleshmarket Close - where the butchers worked maybe two centuries ago - but today it had another resonance: the treatment of asylum seekers, putting people into privately-run detention centers, amounted to "a market in human flesh". Hence the book, "Fleshmarket Close"... US edition "Fleshmarket Alley". (https://www.ianrankin.net/book/fleshmarket-close/)

[In Arizona as well we know this profiteering - the private for-profit detention centers and prisons that take up so much even of our state budget at the expense of schools, humanitarian aid,... And then we have the migrant crisis.]

This January near the US/Mexico border, we saw an incomparable morning at Common Ground on the Border (an annual gathering at Good Shepherd United Church of Christ, with workshops and concerts) with the three speakers, the musicians and brief announcements, and the courtyard players - Walt Mitchell on hammer dulcimer -- which I associate with the Appalachians -- playing a southwestern ballad with PD Ronstadt and Scott Ainsley on guitar was a wonderful finding of musical common ground. And it was good to see and connect with old friends from Humane Borders, Kino Border Initiative, Cruzando Fronteras AZ, Café Justo, Tucson and Green Valley Samaritans, and more... Mediterranean Hope and now Fiona Kendall from the Church of Scotland seconded to UCC global ministries.

Here is a general impression of border and immigration ministries in this area (The Border Patrol's Tucson Sector).

What is going on around here is massive change, all too often, as our heads are kept spinning by the latest changes in federal policies and practices. Over the past six years I've seen intrepid and continuing work by many people as well as recent expressions of exhaustion.

Southside Presbyterian Church in Tucson continues its work, along with their colleagues in other congregations, well beyond the Sanctuary Movement, of advocating and acting on behalf of migrants and their families.

Congregations like Trinity Presbyterian Church work with community volunteers through Catholic church agencies (Kino Border Initiative, Casa Alitas of Catholic Community Services) and United Methodists to take care of people who cross the border - or try to and then must wait. Cruzando Fronteras AZ, an Episcopal project, is building a new shelter in Nogales on the south side of the border, to accommodate migrants and refugees.

San Juan Evangelista Lutheran Church and others not only do ministry on-site but take pastors and others across the border to appreciate and deepen their understanding of the lives, heritage, and spirituality of the people of northern Sonora. Volunteers with Humane Borders, Samaritanos of Tucson and of Green Valley, and No More Deaths continue their actions to succor those in peril in the desert. (The trials of one volunteer gained national attention last year.)

And we continue to learn, through efforts of journalists like Margaret Regan, Curt Prendergast, and Nancy Montoya-Ijams, as well as authors like John Carlos Frey and Reyna Grande, what it is like to live and work through this perilous period.

The question the Iona Community - and the international humanitarian community - has for us on the borders is: how can we help?

For aren't we all on the borders, between hope and perseverance, desperation and compassion, in our common humanity?

bread

St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Tucson has announced its mission: "The community at St. Andrew's seeks to deepen our faith, nurture relationships, and feed our neighbors. You are always welcome here." 

What does it mean to feed our neighbors? For one thing it means welcoming people into our fellowship. For another it means hosting Neighbors Feeding Neighbors, the longtime ministry of The Rev. Deacon Jefferson Bailey and his crew as they prepare and deliver meals to elderly and other people in Armory Park, downtown Tucson, and beyond. 

Beyond ... speaking of that there are a couple of ways we are involved in the larger Tucson community. Neighbors Feeding Neighbors is an active partner of the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona. We are listed among the sponsors of Interfaith Community Services too. These local food banks are part of a larger network, the Association of Arizona Food Banks. 

But how do food banks get their food? How do they get started in the first place? And how can we go beyond - that word again - these local efforts?

Well - here's one way to get started, give support (besides our gifts and donations), and make a difference in the wider world. Some decades ago a pastor on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Art Simon, realized that while the parish food bank and soup kitchen had lines stretching around the block and the clothes closet was very busy, they were only reaching a fraction of the need. What they needed was traction, and scale, that only federal government policy and action could provide. 

So they organized Bread for the World (USA) the Christian citizens' lobby, a nonpartisan ecumenical group that has worked for decades now, pretty effectively, to coax federal legislators toward policies that will combat and reduce extreme hunger - and poverty and all its causes - around the world and here at home. They have advocated for support of effective programs (food stamps, aid for women and families with dependent children, and more) that will help not harm food security. And they invited other congregations to join them. 

We can join them. And have some influence many times beyond what we can (so vitally) accomplish on the local scene. We can begin by writing our legislators, individually and as a church, during their annual Offering of Letters campaign. Details : https://www.bread.org/blog/conversation-about-2020-offering-letters

This year’s Offering of Letters has the potential to unite all of us around a cause that can literally impact millions of people.

By the way, should you wish to make an individual contribution to the work of Bread for the World, please give through your church. Make checks payable to St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, Tucson, and write "Bread for the World" in the memo line.

dawn

5:35 a.m. Jerusalem. Winter. At the third time of prompting I got out of bed and pulled on my shoes. From the hotel I made my way through the souk, its stalls all shuttered, and turned left toward the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Inside I wandered alone. There was a marble slab set into the floor in front of me. Dark cavernous space to the left. On the right a small group stood talking. Around the inner circuit of the building I walked and came back to them. I had a question. The priest motioned me to wait, then I told him I didn't know what I was looking at. Well, you'll want to go up for sure. Up those stairs I climbed to two altars, with a space underneath one. Golgotha. Down again and across into a small inner chapel. Empty. I didn't go all the way inside but I looked around. There were maybe a dozen people in the whole place. That afternoon my group went together. It was packed. In a long line we waited, let through six at a time. Some people tried to rush ahead but the Slavic assistant - deacon? - motioned them back. Inside again at the end all the way in. I knelt on this marble slab covering the tomb of Jesus and rested my forehead on the cool smooth stone. It was dark. After an indeterminate period I heard an intake of breath - my own - opened my eyes, stood up, walked, crouched, slowly as newly awake, out to the larger space. "Father," the deacon motioned, and smiled, guiding me. And the next group of pilgrims went in.

January 12, 2020. For The Christian Century, Buechner Writing Project.

revolutionary baby

Have you ever been present at the birth of a baby? … Oh yes you have! 

There’s a lot going on - excitement or hush, quiet, fuss, anxiety, hope, sorrow, wondering what happens next. Rarely do you have to make a run for it…as if having a baby were some sort of criminal activity, John Dillinger in diapers — or a threat to the state, a subversive activity — so you had to go on the lam into hiding, or exile. But with this baby— 

Maybe there is a threat! A threat to the old regime, the old order of doing business.

Because this is a revolutionary baby. Its birth means the old order of things is going away and something new is emerging. It’s a revolution that begins with a child — and a little family sheltering in the old home town, a visit from total strangers who smell of sheep and then some travelers who smell of strange spices, followed by a warning, in a dream, to get out of there, leave it all behind, and go far away. Over the border, across a river and a desert, to sanctuary.

Like anyone fleeing what they cannot stand and face. 

Like anyone carrying something so precious that the hope of the world, the promise of ages, depends on its deliverance.

That could be any baby. Couldn’t it, but it’s this one, right now, in the little town of Bethlehem, under the shadow of the soldiers and their towers, then into exile in some distant place then return — another dream — and then settled down in the hill town of Nazareth in Galilee. 

Not back home. Not really. The situation has changed.

And that is the threat, and the promise of this infant revolution. All is calm, and then nothing is. And we will see this child grow, as he learns who he really is, and who we really are.

Behold the child of God. And behold God’s love for all his children.

Old Herod the Great and his three dysfunctional sons and the emperor over the sea and all their minions and sycophants, — know what it takes, know what it means, for this small infant to come.

It seems fanciful, ridiculous, that a king, a great builder, and an empire could feel threat from something so small as a family, and a child. But the hope — that is great and inexorable — that is fragile and perfect, is already present in this small beginning. 

And in the small beginning each of us makes. Knowing that we too are the children of God. And that now something new, a new way of being, is coming to life.

***

Eric celebrated his 70th birthday again this year. He and his wife Viviana, my cousin, have been working together creating the Blue Ox Millworks and Historic Park in Eureka, California, since they were married. I was there for their wedding and three years ago for their fortieth wedding anniversary. That afternoon as we gathered in the yard of the Blue Ox they stood in front of their Redwood Shrine, built around a very large cross-section of a coast redwood tree. Describing it, I imagined a 16 foot diameter. Nope. More like 35. The tree that it came from was called the Fieldbrook Giant. It was more than 350 feet tall, and was felled a hundred twenty years ago on a bet. Sections were shipped as far as England. And one ended up in a Eureka tourist shop, for a hundred years, until Eric salvaged it and brought it to the Blue Ox. 

The thirteen-and-a-half ton section they took to England ended up in Cliveden, the trophy home of the wealthy man who had the tree cut down. The National Trust had an interest in studying its tree rings - but it was set in a floor and the researcher they called in, another cousin of mine, decided not to mar it. So there it was, a once living thing over a thousand years old, in pieces, one on the floor of a building in England and another propped against the back of a shop in Eureka, California.

Pretty dead huh? But the story continues… in a minute.

Matthew recalls that the Scripture says he will be called a Nazorean” - probably a conflation of two separate verses. And the meaning is unclear. A Nazirite is a person set aside, dedicated. Which fits. They are settling in Nazareth. Okay. Obvious. And last — and this is intriguing —

the word Nazorean could come from the Hebrew nezer — which means “shoot” or “branch.” The prophet Isaiah says, “A shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse.” (11:1) And there you are — the branch of Jesse’s tree has come to life.

Now whatever happened to that big old tree cut down in 1896? We heard about the sections here and there, distributed for the admiration of tourists. But what was left of the living tree? No way could you make anything grow again, right? Is there hope for a tree cut down?

Someone learned of a project to clone the one hundred oldest biggest trees, to make a living archive of these ancient giants - and as they were thinking about it they walked by the Blue Ox. There was the Fieldbrook Giant - or a slice of it. 

What if…? So he went in and talked to Eric, and then to the living archive people. And the tree archive people got ahold of the landowner in Fieldbrook where the stump still stood - and from the stump a shoot had sprouted and they were able to start a few new little saplings. 

One of them I saw in September, in front of that big old round off the old tree. And when I went back in early December, it had grown…

The story of the Holy Family, the Flight into Egypt, is at first a story filled with fear and apprehension, with sudden movement from safety and joy into a harsh world, and through the desert seeking refuge in a new place. 

But then it becomes again what it was when we beheld the babe in a manger - a story of extraordinary hope, revolutionary hope, of seeing beyond dreams to a new reality. God’s vision is of a future for us of hope.

For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. (Jeremiah 29:11)

What happens when a new tree emerges from an old stump? When a people re-emerges from captivity into new life? When we, held back perhaps by the sins of our own lives or the circumstances we are surrounded by, are able to look beyond and see that God is with us?

Then that is revolutionary indeed.

January 5

Second Sunday after Christmas

• Jeremiah 31:7-14
• Psalm 84 or 84:1-8
• Ephesians 1:3-6,15-19a
• Matthew 2:13-15,19-23

https://www.northcoastjournal.com/humboldt/redwood-reborn/Content?oid=15732133

got fish?

Have you got anything here to eat? A simple, reasonable request. Coming at an extraordinary time. Jesus had just been through one of the most painful and terrifying, and so far unique, experiences a human being has ever undergone. Three days earlier Jesus had been crucified. Thousands had been crucified before him. Thousand would be crucified after. That is not what was unique to Jesus’ experience. But no one of those thousands, except himself, had undergone what was probably one of the most terrifying and painful experiences a human being could undergo. He rose from the dead. Nobody had ever had that experience before. And so here he was a few days later, visiting his disciples. And he said, “have you got anything to eat?” Maybe that would show, per the Evangelist, that he was a real human person after all. All the times the gospels took pains to show he was more than human: now they show that he was truly human. Truly human: I think he was hungry. For three days he had not eaten. (Perhaps a good reason for our three days’ fast.) Before that he was up all night praying, then grabbed, interrogated, tortured, mocked, marched through the streets, and hung up on a cross. And then he was in a rock-hewn tomb. Three days. As promised, he had not eaten since the Passover meal he shared with his disciples. No wonder he was hungry. Wonder that he was. (Luke 24:41)

Children of the Resurrection

Children of the Resurrection

The service of Burial begins with, among other words, these:

I know that my Redeemer liveth,

and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth;

and though this body be destroyed, yet shall I see God;

whom I shall see for myself and mine eyes shall behold,

and not as a stranger.

Job (19:25-27a).

For me the key words in the Gospel lesson for today are “children of the resurrection” and, even more so, “to him all of them are alive.” 

As we approach the Lord’s Table we go to meet the Lord — who is alive and those too who are alive in Him, alive in the Resurrection. And even, I’ve been thinking, we go to meet those who are yet to come.  

Hope for the future, as well as peace about the past, and faith — both comfort and challenge — for the present, are all proclaimed to us in this gospel.

For in Christ we are in communion with all the saints, all who live and die and are raised with him. 

So as we go up to take communion we go up not for ourselves only but for all who share in the joy of the saints.

My professor Donald Nicholl worked this out while he was lay rector of the Ecumenical Study Institute in Jerusalem, a community comprising both Protestants and Catholics. He found that the Protestants would only be able to take communion with other Protestants, and the Catholics with Catholics. So at first his response was to take communion with neither. Then he realized, that will never work. I’m the leader of this community, and I’m never taking communion? So he decided, and said to the rest, that when he went up to take communion he would do it not just for himself but for everyone who could not come up themselves. 

Well, sometimes that would be all of us. And this is a sacrament that we take never so for much for ourselves as when we take it as members of the body of Christ: one bread, one body.

From Isaiah (25:6) we receive this vision of a feast at the end of time:

On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples

   a feast of rich food, a feast of well-matured wines,

   of rich food filled with marrow, of well-matured wines strained clear.

The heavenly feast! Our practical idea of neighbors feeding neighbors is not far off. For what we do here on earth trains us for life eternal. Indeed, if we take resurrection seriously, a couple of things happen. 

For if we take resurrection seriously, we take each other seriously. How shall I regard you if I know you are an eternal being, that you will live forever, that in Christ you have a home in his heart? And how then shall I look at myself - at my own actions, at my self-regard or self- envy, my self-criticism or my downward looks, if Christ is real? 

“Eternal life starts here” could be written over the gates of your life - today, any day, as you enter the church, as you approach the communion rail, as you start again, today, to live life as you want it to be lived. 

***

Even the sorrow of life cut short — or spent badly — is redeemed in the resurrection. And its hope is in us, and we in it. So we can resist despair and live on, live now, in the fullness of that hope, the assurance of redemption.

Father Fuller (from St Frances Cabrini) said: “Our faith in our future resurrection must affect our lives now.” Knowing who we are and believing in the future changes how we treat each other, how we treat ourselves, how we approach life. 

We are called to live in the fullness of confidence that death is not the end — the end is in Christ — the finality of the goal of all life… as all things are gathered to him.

For love is strong as death (Song of Songs, 8:6). 

Death be not proud, the poet said, but death cannot conquer those whom Jesus loves. And that includes you in. 

***

To live now with the resurrection life before us means living now not only for ourselves but for others:

— in our sacramental life,

— in our workaday life,

— in our home life,

— in our social and political life…

How we treat one another, 

how we treat ourselves, 

how we live - 

is in the light of the life of Christ,

that frees us,

empowers us, and

leads us - into strange, new places.

Now, we may not all agree on particular actions — I’m thinking of the social-political realm — but we know of one another who sends us, why and what is behind our actions, the source of our motivations.

“To seek to serve Christ in all persons” — and uphold their dignity as children of God, affects how we conduct our public lives - not just how we vote, but in how we speak to others with whom we disagree. Our attitude of certitude or frustration or despair or even anger over public policy must be leavened with hope — with knowing that we are children of God.

How are we then to live? 

— as God’s children, 

— as transcendent beings of infinite value, 

— as creatures of dust and glory whose mortal acts of the moment are significant in light of 

our immortality, 

of the hope of the resurrection, that is, 

of our presence now in Christ. 

And this presence of Christ in us, which we enact and celebrate as we go up to communion, motivates us, not only to kneel or stand before him Sunday morning, but to stand with him in all the moments of our lives.

***

Last Wednesday evening at Grace Saint Paul’s church a representative of Sea-Watch, a humanitarian aid group working for refugees in the Mediterranean Sea, talk about the externalizing of frontiers, from Europe across the Mediterranean to the borders of Libyan territorial waters. 

And Scott Warren, a cultural geographer from Ajo, told us about the separation of people in that small community into American Town, Mexican Town, and Indian Village. 

But — one bread, one body. 

In Christ we are all one people. Using desert or water to separate us does not, ultimately, work. For we know that our redeemer lives, and on the last day he will triumph — and we with him. 

We begin to realize, as Christ draws all people to himself, that we are already one in the Spirit, and those boundaries we may seek to draw will all evaporate, dissolve, and blow away in the wind of the Spirit. That Holy Breath that in the Beginning moved across the face of the waters has not been still since creation’s dawn — it is still moving. And as it moves, what the world puts up against it will not stand.

***

http://edgeofenclosure.org/proper27c.html

https://sea-watch.org/

https://cdn-prod.opendemocracy.net/media/images/1_yJRNMyB.2e16d0ba.fill-1200x630.jpg

https://www.nps.gov/articles/hohokam-culture.htm

https://www.tucsonsbirthplace.org/tucsons-birthplace/history/

Cui servire est regnare

Re: “To Serve is to Rule” essay by Doug Henwood, Harper’s Magazine, November 2019, p. 37-45. https://harpers.org/archive/2019/11/to-serve-is-to-rule-wasps-doug-henwood/

One a day early in 1882 a dust-covered young gentleman, newly arrived by rail from the East, rode the stage from Benson to Tombstone, regaled en route by the driver’s tales of a holdup on the line the previous year and a gunfight that past October behind a corral only a block from where that young man would build his church. He was Endicott Peabody, seminarian on leave from Episcopal Theological Seminary, whom the town fathers had invited west. And he saw that church building to completion by the fall of that year. (“The oldest Episcopal Church in Arizona, and the only Adobe Gothic Revival church in the world”--current advertisement.) He had a fine time introducing muscular Christianity to the magnates and miners of the boom town at the height of its prosperity. Then, feeling his talents better deployed as rector of a boys’ school than of a parish, he went home and founded Groton. Readers of Henwood’s essay will be pleased to learn that Endicott Peabody Day is now a feast day in the Episcopal diocese of Arizona, and its celebration this November 17th will be led by the Rt. Rev. Jennifer Reddall, and led by the current pastor, the Rev. Heather Rose. As one who has served in the same pulpit as Peabody, for the same length of time, -- only 135 years later -- I wouldn’t miss this celebration. P.S. Peabody presided at the wedding of Eleanor Roosevelt to her cousin Franklin, the latter of whom paid tribute to his former schoolmaster by saying: “I’m still afraid of the old son of a bitch.”

The Rev. Dr. John R. Leech

Tucson, Arizona.

October 21, 2019.

“Preacher in Helldorado” by Henry Walker, Journal of Arizona History, 1974

Thomas Peterson, MA thesis on Tombstone stage lines.