Francis of Assisi

March 19th, 2010

Reading Cuthbert, Life of St. Francis, online.

Word of God, in whom all live and move and have their being, lead us today by your light and truth to be wholly yours and to do your will in small things and in great, according to your good pleasure. Open our hearts and hands to our fellow creatures, that we may live that poverty of things and wealth of love of which our Savior is the best example, who became poor, empowering us to gain riches which neither moth nor rust consume, nor thieves steal. For Jesus’ sake. Amen

Looks like my wonky computer will cost more to repair than to replace.

St. Francis never messed with computers.

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Where your security lies

March 14th, 2010

I’m having trouble focusing on things today. My friend’s death has stirred up a lot of difficult stuff.

I’m reading Francis of Assisi by Leonardo Boff. It’s a heady book. But I’m finding it worth the wade. for example:

How, beyond the mysticism of gentle and compassionate identification with the poor and the Crucified, did they make sense of their want?  No one lives by mysticism alone. Life has demands that cannot be opposed permanently. How did they humanize this objective dehumanization that is poverty? It is precisely within the context of poverty that Francis places the problem of fraternity.  Each one’s  poverty implies for others a challenge, in order, to their care, gentleness, and the creation of an atmosphere of openness and security, denied by radical poverty. For Francis, having has been toppled from its pretension of granting security and humanization to persons. Only care for one another truly humanizes life…. Care is the way of being human.

Leonardo Boff, Francis of Assisi: a Model for Human Liberation. (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2006), p. 66.

I can’t describe what happened to me as I read these words. Of course!! I thought. This is it!!

My African brothers and sisters know this principle, because they live it. “Nobody’s poor here, unless they’re alone,” they said. Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement also knew it.

Jesus did exactly this: he invested in people, flesh and blood, fallible people, like Peter and Mary Magdalene.  If they failed, he failed.  If they succeeded, he succeeded.

I don’t know the specifics for me yet.  But I do know the principle: our ultimate security lies, not in bank accounts or IRAs, but in caring for one another, as God cares for us.

Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

Matt 6:8 (NRSV)

Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you.

1 Peter 5:7 (NRSV)

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Farewell

March 11th, 2010

My friend Reverend Bob Gallier died this morning, after a long illness. Bob taught history in high school and was pastor of the Emmaus Baptist Church in Quinton, VA, before me. He was a prince. Unlike many former pastors, he supported and blessed me in every way he could. I am glad now that God has unknotted the sorrows in his life. Rest in peace, my brother.

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Lady Wonky

March 8th, 2010

My laptop display is acting wonky, a technical term of the Geek Squad, and it’ll be a month before somebody can come out to fix it. So I am condemned to use my old desktop, Stonehenge era dinosaur. But first I had to unclutter the hard drive, so I could get a minimal operating speed. It’s incredible how much stuff gets stashed on a computer, and never taken off. Oh well.

I hope I haven’t uninstalled something essential. We’ll find out soon enough, I guess.

At the moment, in a V position, with a book beneath the keyboard—not me, my laptop!—I’ve got a clear display.

I’ve gotten interested in St. Francis. Leonardo Boff’s Francis of Assisi is a philosophical tour de force, which I’m reading slowly and humbly. But to get the life of Francis I’ll have to go back to G.K. Chesterton’s, and via Internet the very earliest biographies of Celano and Bonaventure. Whoopee!

Poverty is a wonky computer. Hmm! Wonder if Francis would agree.

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The bush is still burning

February 25th, 2010

One of my dreams has been a literary blog, full of mini-masterpieces of wordcraft. I guess that’s one reason why I hang on to this venture.

It’s becoming clear to me, though, that I have a calling to another blog africancounselingcenter.org. When I set that one up, through blogger, I thought it would give my African family a voice of their own.

What I didn’t realize is that in the hustle of surviving there, they don’t have the luxury of sitting down and reflecting. Or if they do, the electricity isn’t on. Or the computer’s on the blink and can’t be repaired. Or….

So increasingly I’m feeling somebody else needs to tell their story. And I can’t really handle two blogs first class at the same time.

What it comes down to is that I need to focus on the africancounselingcenter.org. They’re getting ready to build their permanent home in Yaoundé, God willing in the next year. So it should be a pretty exciting process.

I think it’s against the rules of technorati or google or somebody to put the same content up in two places, so I guess I’ll have to concentrate on africancounselingcenter.org.

I love those folks so much. I know some Christians here with their kind of courage and total commitment, but not many.

So for awhile, I’ll be de-emphasizing I-YOUniverse.net. I hope you’ll follow the Spirit to africancounselingcenter.org, and pray for us as we undertake this incredible story. I’ve been mostly an observer. Sandy and Jean-Emile, Samuel and others have been the heavy lifters, with grace running the show.

I’ve been reading Dorothy Day and asking God to begin whatever God wants to happen in my life. Hineni! Here am I! as the old people of faith always said.

Well, africancounselingcenter.org seems to be it.

I feel some grief at letting go of the old “give ‘em Shakespeare” fantasy. But it’s just a fantasy, a pipe dream. At africancounselingcenter.org I’ll be reporting something real, something eternal.

There’s so much I can’t do. They say in the world of disability, it’s not what you can’t do that counts. What counts is what you can do. In the world of the Spirit what counts is what you do.

Well, this I can do. With God’s help I will. I hope you’ll join me: pray, stay informed, support as God leads.

Blessings. See you soon at africancounselingcenter.org!

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God at work

February 25th, 2010

God is at work as our brothers/sisters in Yaoundé, Cameroon, prepare to build the permanent home for the African Counseling Center (ACC).

Rev Patrick Friday makes third visit to ACC

Accompanied by Rev Nkemba Ndjungu, UMC Mission Superintendent in Cameroon, and the Women Project Officer, Rev Friday met with Samuel Lindjeck the ACC Clinical and Program Director, Marie Meyong ACC General Treasurer and members of the staff to discuss the planned ACC head office building.

Resolutions after discussion included:

  • The building project will be scheduled for one year.
  • Rev Nkemba Ndjungu, UMC Mission Superintendent in Cameroon, will be a local supervisor of the project.
  • The money will be disbursed in five sums of $20,000.
  • The first step is the purchase and the certification of land.
  • The Board, the staff, and the civil engineer have to plan other steps, and reevaluate the cost of the project (as the initial one has been evaluated in 2007).

All the ACC Board and Staff are grateful to our Companions in Hope, Trinity  UMC Richmond, and the Advance office.

Permanent activities at the ACC

The ACC staff is working continuously on some permanent activities:

  • Counseling sessions to Street children, HIV affected and infected people, individuals and families,
  • Advocacy for people living with HIV and Tuberculosis
  • Psychological evaluation of young candidate to the priesthood or to pastoral ministry,
  • Educative talks with youths in churches and at the ACC head office

We regularly provide direct support to orphans:

  • school supplies and fees
  • clothing
  • medical support and advocacy

School supplies provided  September 2009; Clothing, December 2009.

Cameroon Bible Society training event

Training session on counseling and care to Cameroon Bible Society women (CBS).

In networking with the CBS, the ACC staff will be presenting a second training session to a group of women in charge of care giving to the violated and single young mothers in Yaoundé. This session will be held on March 10-14, 2010. The group of women attended a first training session in April 2009.

Report submitted by Samuel Lindjeck, Program and Clinical Director ACC, 24 February 2010.

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The continuinjg incarnation

February 24th, 2010

Wonderful DVD, I may have mentioned it: Entertaining Angels: The Dorothy Day Story. I also am reading Robert Ellsberg’s edited selections of her writings.

She hung out with Communists, anarchists, women’s movement activists prior to women’s having the vote. Not a likely candidate for sainthood. Had an abortion. But later, when she gave birth to her daughter Tamara, she was brought into the Catholic Church.

Never lost her love of the poor. Not until she met a French peasant-philosopher Peter Maurin did she know how to make the difference she sought in the world.

She found God in the poor. The incarnation continues, most specially (not exclusively) among the poor.

How does someone like me put her insights into action, I wonder. Both she and Gandhi used the written word effectively to build a movement.

Think what a blog could do, if God got hold of it, with the energy behind it of someone like her. I’m a shriveled up crippled never was has been. But surely God can use what little I have somehow to help Christianity in America heed God’s option for the poor.

The wrongs of capitalism are rampant in this country. Just think of the contortions Congress is going through simply to pass health care reform. If we can’t do something so clearly just as that, how can we expect to do anything?

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Read the Bible in a Year

February 22nd, 2010

I’m approaching the halfway point in my project of reading the Bible in a year. I have many empty hours to fill during the night and day, so there’s no virtue in my being so far ahead. My reading isn’t thoughtful, isn’t lectio divina; it’s more scanning. I’m also reading the Jewish Study Bible as well. I like the Jewish viewpoint, somewhat new for me, although I delved deep in grad school into Hebrew. I like having a balance of OT, NT, psalm and proverb in each reading, although the lectionary is better which unites readings thematically, theologically. During the enforced isolation of snow days, I have missed meeting with intrepid Bible reading partners. I’m hoping we’ll resume both Tuesday and Thursday groups this week.

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No liberty

February 22nd, 2010

The unemployment rate is now at 10 million, I think. Discouraged workers, no longer searching, pushes the numbers of workers up past 17 million? I’ve been reading Dorothy Day, Selected Writings. Also watched the Paulist DVD about her Entertaining Angels. We need a legion of such persons today. The social termites busily reduce the edifice of American liberty and justice to a shell. There is no liberty for the destitute, only the desperate struggle to find food, shelter, dignity, hope for another day.

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The circle of life

February 16th, 2010

When slighted by her husband, Nabal the Churl, Abigail advises David not to act out, take revenge. If only he’d listened to her counsel that day on the roof top before sleeping with Bathsheba and killing her husband!

If anyone should rise up to pursue you and to seek your life, the life of my lord shall be bound in the bundle of the living under the care of the LORD your God; but the lives of your enemies he shall sling out as from the hollow of a sling.

1 Sam 25:29 (NRSV)

If anyone stands in your way, if anyone tries to get you out of the way, Know this: Your God-honored life is tightly bound in the bundle of God-protected life; But the lives of your enemies will be hurled aside as a stone is thrown from a sling.

Message

The Jewish Study Bible equates this “bundle of the living” (only here) with the Book of Life.

I recently watched Casino Royale, and 007 learns to trust nobody. A kind of insanity the Western male is prone to admire—being the single stone flung from the hollow of the slingshot.

Personally, I’d rather be bound in the bundle of the living.

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