community – Page 12 – Southwest Conference Blog

Voting as a Spiritual Discipline

One of the core purposes of spiritual practice is to remember who we are.

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
    the moon and the stars that you have established;
what are human beings that you are mindful of them,
    mortals that you care for them?

Yet you have made them only slightly less than divine,
    and crowned them with glory and honor.
~ Psalm 8

We struggle to remember our worth: a little lower than the angels. We struggle to remember our humble embodiment: to dust we shall return. Sometimes we experience both sides of this tension moment by moment in a single day!

Humble and as temporary as the grass… and yet.

Of infinite worth, in the image of Creative Mystery… and yet.

So, vote next week if you haven’t already.

Vote? What? Maybe this feels like a leap. Maybe I’m reaching (picture in your mind my family and friends nodding vigorously). Electing leaders is a tremendous task. The voting booth is holy ground, an acknowledgement of our respect for democracy, a nod to our common humanity and our shared citizenship responsibilities. And yet… my little vote is one of millions, the proverbial drop in a bucket. Voting is a way to remember who we are. Of course, we vote prayerfully. Of course, we vote our values as people of faith. But the act of voting itself – participating in the ground of our communal life – can call us to balance between our humanness and our divine source.

I’ve heard our General Minister and President Rev. Dr John Dorhauer describe the United Church of Christ as a truly democratic institution. So maybe on November 6, instead of rocking the vote, we can sacred the vote.

Do you think the poll workers will scold me if I kick my shoes off before going into my voting booth?

A Prayer for Today:

God of Hopeful Tomorrows – Renew our faith in voting. Strengthen our fight to honor the rights of all. Set fire in our hearts a vision of our communities, state, and nation united in compassion and action. Walk with us into the voting booth and then out into the world. Amen.

Lessening Your Footprint

by Jocelyn Emerson

One of the things that continually comes to mind when I contemplate stewardship of God’s Creation is “the size of my footprint.” How much does my way of living impact the Earth? What is my responsibility to lessen that impact for my descendants?

Avenger’s Age of Ultron:

After defeating Ultron, the Avengers come together at Tony Stark’s (Iron Man) new headquarters in Upstate NY somewhere. Tony, Captain America and Thor are debriefing, chatting and joking around as they walk. Thor must leave and go in search of the Infinity Stones (prelude to Infinity War) and learn what he can about them.

Once outside, he holds us his hammer calling the Bifrost (the rainbow bridge). The Bifrost picks him up and takes him way, leaving its intricate mark on the ground — a huge circle that destroys the lawn beneath it.

Tony Stark (jokingly) to Captain America: That man has no regard for lawn maintenance…. (walking away) I’m going to miss him though…

What size footprint do you leave?
The Bifrost leaves quite a huge footprint on the ground of where ever it picks Thor up. The ground underneath is ruined by the power of the Bifrost’s rainbow bridge. It creates a symbol that reminds me of a cross between Celtic cross and a crop circle.

This conversation between Tony Stark and Captain America made me laugh. Yet, it brought forth in my heart the question: what size footprint do I leave?

In the eco-justice circle of thought and dialogue, we hear that question often. How can you lessen your footprint? There is tremendous encouragement to lessen it as much as possible.

Those lists of how you can lessen your footprint sometimes feel overwhelming.

Easy:
When I look I already do the easy things: recycle everything I can, have a chemical free house, buy organic and fair trade foods, use more ecological light bulbs, etc.

Moderate:
I also already do many of the moderate tasks: I carry my own bags rarely using plastic bags, lessen the use of plastic in my life, walk to destinations that are close enough instead of driving, etc. These require me to be more conscious. They are not always habits. Many of them require more of my time and awareness.

Expert:
Then there is the list that always feels like if I put my energy there it will take quite a bit of effort. It feels like the expert level of lessening my footprint. It is the list that requires commitment! as well as resources to accomplish: no-waste, alternative power like solar and wind, hybrid cars, eco-homes, etc.

I get the importance of lessening our footprints. As the human race has grown we have dominated the planet, maybe even overwhelmed it. In urban and suburban areas it can be challenging to find open space, let alone green space. Cities are allowing developers to create housing where there were once parks. Forests are being encroached upon. Wildlife habitats are disappearing as human require more and more space.

We do need to lessen our footprints in order to allow all the other beings on this planet to continue to have homes, to continue to thrive.

Taos, NM and lessening my footprint:
When I lived in Taos for nine months, I decided to see how much I could lessen my footprint. Since I was on sabbatical, working on my business, I decided that I had the time to see how close I could get to zero waste living.

I will totally admit it took a great deal of my attention and time. I had to make conscious choices about what I bought at the grocery store: could I recycle that container?

Styrofoam containers
Styrofoam presented the greatest challenge and ask me to make changes in how I did things. Because most grocery stores sell meat in styrofoam, I thought I might have to become vegetarian again. However, I found that the local health food store had a butcher and I could buy my meat wrapped in paper (recyclable).

Styrofoam did require me to change my habits about eating out. I had to begin to bring with me my own “take home” containers when I went to restaurants, just in case there contains were styrofoam.

Buy local and bulk
I joined the local Taos Co-Op and learned all about bulk food buying. Investing in glass containers meant that I was making choices about how I spent my money. I had to sacrifice other areas so that I could afford the glass.

Compost
I began a compost pile on the Land I was staying on, caring for it regularly. I learned that, because I backed up to desert wilderness, the animals were quite happy to feast on that pile. That felt good! I was not wasting food, I was feeding the wildlife.

By the time I left, I had my trash down to one tiny bag a month. This experiment taught me how my choices affect this planet. How I chose to use my time and energy is one of the foundations of stewardship of creation. The greatest impact we have on our immediate environment is how we chose to use our time and resource to care for our property, land, water, etc.

Commitment
Lessening my footprint required commitment. There were days when I was exhausted. In those moments that “I don’t care” feeling arose in my body and spirit. It was asking me: how committed am I to this experiment, to this lessen in stewardship? Each time it arose in me, I had to deepen and strengthen my level of commitment.

Currently, I am not able to be anywhere as close to zero-waste as I was in Taos. Because of this experience, my heart yearns for me to be in living situation where I can step back into the experiment again. Although this experience required focus, commitment, energy, shifting in how I do things, giving up habits, etc; it deepened my connection to Mother Earth! I desire to bring that disciple back into my life.

All that Spirit asks of us is that we become conscious of how we live on Mother Earth, on God’s creation. Spirit invites us to contemplate ways to be more aligned, more in partnership with the web-of-life so that we feel Her presence in all that we do.

Reflection questions:
What is the size of your footprint?
How can you lessen it, even a tiny bit?
What habits would you need to change?
How do you use your resources to protect and care for the environment?

Prayer:
We call on your mercy and your grace, O God, to carry us into a new communion with the created order. Pour your compassion and your forgiveness over us. Give us a vision of healing and togetherness for your entire world. We know that, with Christ as our helper, we can restore justice and balance and live in harmony with all that you have made.

“No One Cares About Crazy People” Spotlights Our Fractured Mental Health System and One Family’s Battle with Schizophrenia

guest post by Kathryn Andrews, a member of the Southwest Conference’s Widening the Welcome Committee and Desert Palm United Church of Christ

“What if you raised a child who grew up sunny, loved, and loving, perhaps unaccountably talented, a source of family joy, only to watch that child slowly transform in adolescence into a mysterious stranger, shorn of affect, dull of gaze, unresponsive to communication – and perhaps worse?” This is one of wrenching questions author Ron Powers asks in “Nobody Cares About Crazy People,” the story of his schizophrenic sons.

The book is more than a chronicle of one family’s struggle with a serious mental illness. It also serves as an indictment of our national approach to dealing (or not dealing) with mental illness. As Powers recounts, mental hospitals began to appear in the early 19th century, including Philadelphia Hospital, which charged admission to view the insane residents in its basement. In 1841, Quaker Dorthea Dix discovered that violent criminals were sharing jail cells with persons with mental illness in Massachusetts. She devoted the rest of her life to lobbying for dedicated care outside of the penal system, and by 1890 thirty-two new asylums were in place. Yet even with these reforms, individual care and treatment at the overflowing asylums was hard to come by.

President Kennedy took steps to address this overburdened system by signing the Community Mental Health Act (“CMHA”). The legislation, crafted in consultation with psychiatrists and health executives, was aimed at releasing 560,000 patients from state-run asylums to 1,500 new community health centers around the country. The hope was that new “wonder drugs” like Thorazine would enable this population to navigate the outside world and become productive. The CMHA liberated 430,000 patients by 1980, but a combination of factors thwarted the transition to community care.

Over the ensuing decades, budget pressures diverted funds that could have supported the CMHA centers. Meanwhile, Congress passed the Medicaid act, which prohibited federal reimbursement to states for psychiatric patients in state hospitals. The act’s objectives were to encourage patient release from such institutions and to prod the states to assume responsibility for care and treatment costs. The states, however, showed little interest in taking the reins. Without the community follow-up care envisioned by the CMHA, many became chronically ill, homeless, or incarcerated. The upshot was that many of these persons did not become “de-institutionalized” but rather traded one institution for another as the U.S. penal system replaced the mental hospital.

Although American mental health care remains haphazard and chaotic, Powers takes heart from the progress made in researching the causes and treatments of mental illnesses. New research has identified 128 gene variants likely to be involved in the abnormal brain development seen in schizophrenics. The research also reflects that environmental factors likely influence the onset and degree of the disease. Meanwhile, advances are occurring in magnetic resonance imaging, and psychotropic medicines can regulate serotonin and dopamine, which affect behavior.

As the Powers family learned too late, some antipsychotic medicines can be taken by the “depot” method of periodic injection. This method eliminates the need for self-administered oral dosages and ensures consistent medication. This consistency becomes critical when a patient develops “anosognosia,” the false conviction that nothing is wrong with the patient’s mind. Anosognosia caused one Powers son to abandon his medications and end his life just shy of his 21st birthday. The other son survived and lives near his parents.

For the author, the future of mental health care for his surviving son and others with mental illness, “will depend upon whether Americans can recognize that their psychically troubled brothers and sisters are not a threat to communities but potential partners with communities for not only their own but their community’s regeneration. . .. The mentally ill people in our lives, as they strive to build healthy, well-supported, and rewarding lives for themselves, can show us all how to reconnect with the most primal of human urges, the urge to be of use, disentangling from social striving, consumer obsession, cynicism, boredom, and isolation, and honoring it among the true sources of human happiness.”

Getting Started with Our Whole Lives

by Karen Richter

Does your congregation have an Our Whole Lives program for children or adults? Have you thought about it but aren’t sure where to start?

Our Whole Lives (often abbreviated OWL) is a holistic, factual, and values-based set of human sexuality curricula designed and supported jointly by the Unitarian Universalist Association and the United Church of Christ. And OMG…it’s so awesome. Positive and affirming sexuality education is like the Gospel – it’s Good News!

As an Our Whole Lives facilitator and trainer, I see the bedrock of OWL like this: Sexuality is a gift from a loving Creator. Shadow Rock folks have heard me use this language: “When we say that God loves everybody, that means God loves Every Body!” Even when the program is presented as a secular educational opportunity, this life-giving mindset comes through.

Our Whole Lives “angel tree” helps Shadow Rockers feel connected to our OWL program and fills our cabinets with necessary supplies.

Want to think about this a bit more? Here are some places to start:

Karen’s Our Whole Lives YouTube playlist
These are not official Our Whole Lives videos, but they can help you start thinking in an OWL-ish kind of way.
Facilitator Training
You can see upcoming training on the UCC’s OWL pages.
Shadow Rock will host secondary level training (grades 7-9 and 10-12) in November. The training weekend is a great experience – intense and formative – even if you don’t have plans to lead the curriculum immediately.
Do some reading! For children, I recommend Robie Harris’s series and Corey Silverberg’s fantastically inclusive What Makes a Baby. For adults, check out Christopher Ryan’s Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships. My favorite read of 2018 so far is Sonya Renee Taylor’s The Body is Not an Apology.
Reflect a bit on your own sexuality education. What was good about it? What was missing? What are your hopes and dreams for your own children or for the children in your neighborhood and community?
Let’s talk! There are very few things that I am more enthusiastic about than Our Whole Lives. If you’re in central AZ, let’s have coffee. If you’re not, shoot me an email and let’s find a time to chat.

Our Whole Lives is a gift TO the United Church of Christ and a gift FROM the United Church of Christ. Let’s make the most of it!

Karen Richter serves on the Board of the Southwest Conference United Church of Christ and is an All-Levels Approved Our Whole Lives Trainer and Facilitator. You can get in touch with Karen via email karen@shadowrockucc.org.

Baby Wisdom

by Davin Franklin-Hicks

Our survival in this life is contingent on how we understand our basic needs. Living is the practice of meeting these needs. Our ability to meet those needs changes as we change. We complicate this extraordinarily well throughout our lives.

We have needs.
We come into this world, screaming and demanding .
Those cries from the newborn beckon us to help them survive.
Their cries beg for food, warmth and safety. And so it starts.

We seem to lose the understanding of our own needs as we grow older. We get conditioned in all sorts of ways as we live. The further we get away from the day we were born, the less we seem able to tolerate our own neediness. We judge it.

It hurts my heart when I witness someone embarrassed to admit that they have a need. We cast shame on people for needing and for expressing that need. Some even taunt others about it. “You don’t have to be such a big baby about it.”

In an effort to be “less of a baby” about it, we begin to push away the awareness that our own needs exist and forget that it’s crucial to have these needs met. We deny our needs and that usually comes out sideways in our living.

We work against our own survival at times because we don’t want to be vulnerable and we don’t want to be rejected. We do not want to have needs that we cannot meet on our own. We want self sufficiency and for others to view us as strong.

So we…
…starve ourselves.
…gamble away our security and safety.
… make choices that leave us out in the cold.

And we sprinkle all of that with a nice dose of shame and loneliness.

In our living, we often focus on the weight of need and it can be burdensome. If that’s where we are focused, we miss the true life-affirming part of need.

When we were babies, completely reliant on others, we learned something each time we had a need met: It’s not our needs alone that make us human, it’s the never being alone in our need that truly helps us live.

In our most vulnerable moments, we may desperately want to deny our needs even exist. We may want to hide the evidence of our humanity. I hope we do that less and less as we grow.

And I sincerely hope we will be big babies about it.

Blessed are . . .

by Abigail Conley

Each year, we bless backpacks for kids headed back to school. We’ll pray over teachers’ bags and college students’ bags, and the bag of pretty much anyone who wants, but it starts with the kids. I make luggage tags for their backpacks, reminding them they are loved. Like the lectionary, I rotate on a three-year cycle, figuring it can work for more than one thing.

Overall, I think the Episcopalians and the Catholics do a better job of blessing than Congregationalists of most varieties. I could be wrong, but blessing just doesn’t hold the same prestige in our understanding of church. I am far more inclined to say that the ordinary is holy than to reserve a thing as purely holy; that inclination is a product of the churches that formed me.

Not surprisingly, the most ready notion of blessing for me is the Beatitudes. Along with the Lord’s Prayer, they were one of the texts memorized in fifth grade Sunday school if one wanted to graduate into youth group.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. (Matthew 5:3-12)

I most appreciate interpreting the Beatitudes as pronouncement. By speaking it, Jesus makes it true that these things are blessed.

For we who join in God’s work, this is why we bless backpacks. By speaking a word of blessing upon them, we make the work they represent holy. One of the gifts of the church is that we can discern this together.

While education is transformative, it is not easy. For children, it is not always good. My grandfather bribed me to go to kindergarten and not cry. I was barely old enough for kindergarten and the teacher’s whistle scared me. It took months to coax out that truth of why kindergarten was so hard. In the meantime, my grandfather paid me fifty cents a day to go to school, not to cry, and trusted me to tell him the truth. He paid me in quarters every weekend. The price was set at fifty cents because it was the cost of a can of soda at recess.

Later grades would bring other challenges. I had the same terrible teacher for second and third grades. My elementary school closed. Middle school is terrible for pretty much everyone. Then I wonder if high school is any better and mostly, I think about how hard it all was. It was hard for me, who got straight As, who had plenty of friends, who never got picked on. I can only imagine what it was like for other kids. School itself, even with saintly teachers, is far from holy. It is blessed because we choose for it to be. It is blessed because the Church has decided to bless it.

I wonder what things we’re missing. What aren’t we calling holy? What things need our blessing? What is waiting for a word of transformation?

Faithful Decision Making – Rising to the Challenge of the Times

by Karen Richter

When Scott and I were first married, we had a friend named Glenn who worked with Scott at Barnett Bank in Florida. Glenn told us one evening about watching a teller at the bank flipping through a large stack of bills… She touched each bill for a fraction of a second and maybe once in the stack she would pull a bill out and put it to the side. These were the bills that she suspected were counterfeit. Actually more than suspecting, she just KNEW – knew from the slight variations of the texture of the paper and ink under the edge of her thumb.

What does that story have to do with discernment? Discernment is not like that. We very seldom ‘just know.’ Over a person’s lifetime, they make millions of decisions of all shapes and sizes. Over a person’s lifetime, maybe for one of those decisions, they “just know.”

The traditional practice of discernment – faithful decision making – as spiritual discipline owes much to the Catholic Ignatian tradition and to Quaker practices. There’s a history there and much ancient wisdom… but that’s not today’s blog.

Discernment is a practice suited well to the times in which we live. So let’s take a minute to talk about how we might understand these times. So many of us have a gut feeling that there’s something special different unique going on in our churches and institutions. Is it just our imagination or are things truly changing more quickly and more profoundly than in times past? Church historian Phyllis Tickle writes about this idea: that every 500 years or so, the church has a “great rummage sale” in which ideas and notions of the role of the church get all shifty (The Great Emergence, Baker Books 2012). The Protestant Reformation was the most recent of these great transitions (Luther’s theses were posted on Halloween in 1517 – early Renaissance social media LOL). The Reformation was a time in which the authority of the church shifted in a profound way – from the Pope and the hierarchy of the church to the scriptures.

1517… hmmm. Well… TICK TOCK Y’ALL. We’re due for another great rummage sale, and it’s happening all around us. Tickle’s thesis is that the transition in which we’re living now is another change in our source of authority: from the Bible to the Spirit.

Assuming that she’s right*, it behooves us to learn the best ways to hear the voice of Spirit. And that’s what discernment is all about. Spiritual direction is a great setting in which to dive into personal and vocational discernment. I think of direction as a container in which discernment can unfold.

In that container (or in whatever setting we are discerning), there’s an atmosphere of trust.

We trust the deep desires of our heart. When we ask discernment questions, we trust that our hearts are already leaning the right way. We trust that God somehow has placed those desires in our hearts.
We trust the goodness of Life at a basic level. In this way, we are able to hold our decision lightly… to remain open and receptive to the Spirit’s movement, letting go of our own agenda even if just for a time.
We trust our imagination and intuition. We allow our emotions and physical sensations to inform our decision making. My spiritual direction mentor and supervisor Rev Teresa Blythe has this go-to question: ‘where do you feel this decision in your body?’ It took me a while sitting with this question to grasp what it means.
Finally, we trust our community. We lean on one another’s wisdom.

Discernment is entwined with the Cs of our faith journey– commandment, commission, and commitment – and interacts with those concepts around the question of HOW. Discernment is all about the HOW.

How do we respond to the commandment of love? What does our call to love look like on the ground, in real life?
How do we live into the task before us – our commission to embrace this life and embody grace and peace? What part of this work is ours to do? What tasks have my name on them?
How do we sustain the commitment that’s required to build the house of Wisdom?

These are the questions of discernment continually lying before us: as a faithful community, as individuals, as a culture, as a species. May we make decisions that are life-giving. Amen.

*☺ I’m not at all qualified to argue with Phyllis Tickle! Her ideas are given the briefest summary/mangle here. The Great Emergence is a fab overview of church history for lay persons.

July 24, 2018

by Abigail Conley

I woke up early, sick to my stomach because I ate things I shouldn’t of the night before. I stayed up and wrote a sermon.

I ate a late breakfast, watched some TV, took a shower, and headed to Costco.

On Sunday, I’d received an email asking for goods to be donated to help families being reunified following separation under Trump’s zero tolerance immigration policy. On Sunday afternoon, I sent out an email to the congregation asking for water, pads, stuffed animals, snacks, backpacks and a few other things. We needed them all by Tuesday night. With the limited time frame, several people sent money instead of dropping off goods. I was headed to Costco to spend that money on what was needed.

I put giants boxes of Always brand pads in my cart, along with boxes of trail mix and boxes of granola bars. I went to the back of the store to get water, but settled on Gatorade instead. I don’t get stomach bugs often, so it was not too long ago that I found out that Gatorade can be a magical elixir. It seemed that people recently released from detention might need that magical elixir, even if it was much more expensive.

I checked out and went on my way. As I was walking out of the doors, my phone rang. A colleague in Tucson was calling. Were we doing anything? They money donated for immediate needs. Could we get stuff there? I told her I would gladly turn around and buy more supplies if she told me how much. I hadn’t been able to find my Costco card before leaving home, so I went back for a temporary one a second time. I grabbed a cart a second time. I bought nuts instead of trail mix this time, but still pads, Gatorade, and granola bars. I loaded these items into my car.

I called my partner as I left the parking lot to tell him it was a good thing I’d gotten his car instead of my much smaller one. When I got to the church, I unloaded so that everything could be better reloaded later. I added to the stash of what was already waiting in the classroom.

Then, I called my contact at the social service agency to confirm a drop-off time and see if any needs had changed. The needs had, in fact, changed some. The families had requested Bibles in Spanish, men’s deodorant, a broader assortment of hygiene items, and shoelaces for kids and adults. Detention, after all, is a form of jail. Of course, the officers took everyone’s shoelaces, even the kids’.

I sat at my desk and cried. The horror settled in. My government, my neighbors see these kids and their parents as dangerous enough to lock them up, even taking away their shoelaces. I’d always assumed that when someone was released, whatever items were taken were returned to them. Apparently, this is not true. These kids and their parents need shoelaces.

Sometimes, we count atrocities in both humanizing and terrifying ways. I’ve never been able to shake the sight of the piles of shoes in the Holocaust Museum in D.C. Now, I’m wondering, where are there piles of shoelaces? Can they be counted? What is done with them? Who keeps them? Who notices the workboot laces and purple sparkles of children’s laces in the same bins? Where are all of those shoelaces now? Somewhere, there are thousands of shoelaces. Somewhere, there is this tangible record of this horror unfolding on our borders. I wonder who is bearing witness to these piles of shoelaces.

Time ran slowly for a while. I sat, shocked by the weight of the terrible. I know my horror pales in comparison to what my neighbors are going through. I cannot imagine what it is like to have your life fall apart so completely that you must ask neighbors for shoelaces.

I cannot forget those shoelaces. I imagine that from now on, every time I touch shoelaces, I will remember this day.

More friends and colleagues donated money that afternoon. I stopped to get food for myself at the grocery store because my packed lunch was insufficient. Deodorant was on sale, as were school supplies, so I gathered up backpacks and deodorant, $90 worth. When I got to the register, I stumbled into a sale, so it was only $65. I was in a hurry, needing to be back at work, so I didn’t go back for more.

Back at church, I unlocked the doors. Friends I had not seen in quite some time brought supplies. Another friend and I sorted through donations, getting them ready to go. At 7, I loaded my car. For some unknown reason, I reserved this task for myself, wanting to somehow count, know what was loaded.

Having money left from donations and some more thrown in over the course of the afternoon, I stopped at Target and bought every single pair of shoelaces I could find that might possibly be of use. They only had laces for men’s shoes, but I bought them. Workboot laces and sneaker laces and dress shoe laces. Seventeen pairs. The total was within 20¢ of the money I had left. I added the shoelaces to everything else and went home, so very tired.

Once upon a time, I would have said exhausted. That is not true. I was very tired. I was not exhausted. People who need shoelaces are exhausted, not me, who curled up in bed and watched a movie before drifting off to sleep, safe and secure in my own home.

May God have mercy on our neighbors who need shoelaces. I don’t know how to ask for God’s mercy for the rest of us.

Locking up Jesús

by Talitha Arnold

Once, a few centuries ago, two parents arrived with their child at the border of another country. They had fled their homeland because of the violence directed toward children like the infant they held in their arms. It had been a difficult journey across the desert, but the hope of safety for their child compelled them to keep walking.

There’s no record of what happened at the border, but the refugee family must have been welcomed, since they were able to stay in the new country until the terror in their homeland ended and it was safe for their child.

The parents were named Joseph and Mary (José y María, in Spanish). The toddler, of course, was Jesus, or Jesús in Spanish. Mary and Joseph were probably not the only parents who walked across the desert to find refuge in Egypt. King Herod’s reign of terror threatened every toddler boy under 2. Who wouldn’t flee such violence for the sake of their children?

Whether we call them Mary, Joseph and Jesus or María, José y Jesús, the biblical refugee family’s story is at the heart of the Christian faith. It should also be in the heart of every person — including every political leader — who claims to be Christian. How we treat refugees, how we welcome the stranger, how we love and care for those in need — all of that is informed by the life of the one who himself was a refugee, who grew up as a stranger in a strange land, who knew what it was like to be in need of the kindness of others.

As a Christian pastor and a U.S. citizen, I am a firm believer in the First Amendment’s separation of church and state. However, when political leaders use religious texts to justify government policies — as both Attorney General Jeff Sessions and White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders did last week — then religious leaders need to respond. Hence this article.

Moreover, if either Sessions or Sanders really knew their Christianity, they would know that Jesus himself broke political and religious laws time and again in order to obey the greatest law of all — to love God and love neighbor. In fact, had either of them kept reading a bit further in Romans 13, they’d seen that Paul affirmed Jesus’ teaching. “All the commandments can be summed up in this word,” Paul wrote, “ ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to the neighbor, therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.”

If political leaders are going to quote Christian scripture, they need to get it right. The heart of the Christian faith is to have the heart of the One who taught us to love our neighbor and care for the stranger. The One who was a refugee and found welcome in a new land.

this article originally appeared as the lead editorial in the Santa Fe New Mexican on June 23, 2018

Hope of a Teddy Bear

by Abigail Conley

This week, I have wept. Before this, I’d held back tears about the children in cages in detention centers. Maybe that’s why it’s been so long since I’ve written, actually, unwilling to open the flood gates. The dumpster fire is raging after all.

But many times over the last two days, I have wept.

On Saturday, an agency reuniting families sent a request for donations of items. While families have been held, there was little to collect in the way that churches do. The list was not long and many of the things you would expect: water and Gatorade, backpacks, pads, and snacks. I cried over one item, though: small stuffed animals. It wasn’t the stuffed animals, but the descriptor given: “comfort items for the children.”

My heart broke, the flood gates opened, and they haven’t stopped.

It’s a clinical descriptor, one I’ve heard before in education about child development. However, the deep place that I know it from is The Giver. If you haven’t read the children’s book, go get it and read it. I guarantee your local library has it. Like many of my favorite books, it’s set in a dystopian time–future or past, I don’t know. It is a world of sameness, though, and familial bonds have intentionally been destroyed. Children are born in one place, birthed by women of sturdy stock, but placed with families deemed more functional. Among many things, love is not a concept or a practice. Read the book; I promise that it’s really good.

In that world, children are given specific clothes to mark transitions. Items come and go at specific times in development, as they do for all children in the community. One of those items is a comfort object. The main character’s sister, Lily, is near to losing hers because of her age. It is, indeed, called a comfort object. She doesn’t realize in other places, it would be called an elephant. She has had it since infancy and sleeps with it at night. After all, that’s what comfort objects are for.

There’s some horrible reality when this phrase from dystopian fiction comes barreling into requests from churches. Last night, I went to Target and bought ten small teddy bears as my family’s contribution to the drive. Comfort objects.

My own childhood comfort object is stashed away at home. I’ve had it for more than thirty years now, a gift from family friends for my third birthday. At least that’s what my family tells me. I don’t remember getting Flop, but I do remember him always being with me. He’s a pink rabbit, now faded to nearly gray. His eye and head were reattached by my grandmother, her stitches still visible. Like Flop’s origins, my family remembers nighttime searches for him so that I could sleep. There were trips back to grandparents’ houses to retrieve him and flashlights taken to the playhouse. He was necessary and loved. My mom still rolls her eyes when I mention him, remembering the many times she moved hell and high water to find him; she’d do it, again. He’s still in my home for a reason.

Maybe I would not cry so much for these children if I didn’t have such an attachment for Flop. He represents a stability that every child deserves, from the bunny himself to the people who searched for him throughout my childhood. My parents still attend church with the people who bought him for me. There is so much stability wrapped up in that raggedy stuffed animal.

I am glad for these tears because we should mourn for these children who will never have that sort of stability in their lives. We should mourn for our complicity in their reality.

Strikingly, the best secular descriptor I have for the Reign of God also comes from The Giver. When the main character, Jonas, is realizing the gift he possesses, he catches a glimpse of red as he and his best friend are tossing an apple back and forth. In this world of sameness, most people do not see color. He only sees it occasionally and is never quite certain it was there and no one else sees it. When he does catch a glimpse, he wants to know more; it piques his curiosity. “Red” he learns later. “Red” describes this amazing thing.

I often think of that image. It’s Matthew’s “the kingdom of heaven is at hand” and all of the already and not yet of the Gospels. It’s the upside down of Luke that God would choose the poor over the rich, the child over the leader, and the simple over the complex. It’s beautiful and hopeful, even in the midst of threat.

As I write, people are dropping off the items needed. I have prayed over them many times today and will pray over them some more before handing them off. I hope they are at least a glimpse of something else. I don’t care at all if the people receiving would call it the reign of God. I hope they see a glimpse of a world where hungry people are fed, thirsty people are handed water, and children are comforted. I hope they see a glimpse of the fact that many of us would not choose their reality for any one. I hope it is a beautiful, wonderful glimpse of something, anything else.

Here’s hoping this little teddy bear does exceeds expectations in the Reign of God.