Braving the Thin Spaces!
#Jesus;#Faith;#homelessness;#spirituality
Peniel: Newsletter of Temenos Catholic Worker
"Where Jacob Wrestled With God!
July, 2024
FORTY-SECOND ANNUAL TIME OF
PRAYER AND FASTING FOR THE TRUTH OF
GOSPEL NONVIOLENCE
(July1–August 9)
----------------
"Braving the Thin Places!
---------
These past few months I have come to understand within myself that I am walking the thin spaces between life and death, and am doing my best to brave them.
Seeing so much pain on the street, the recent Supreme Court decision to allow cities to drive homeless with their possessions off the street, our Mayor and Supervisors cheering this decision, and one? Mayoral candidate proudly, with a smile campaigning with these words, "We can make San Francisco a lovely city again," tells me there is truly little compassion for people without housing.
The past seven years have seen me being broken physically--my shoulder cuff shattered; my hips shattered; I am suffering from long-term COVID-19, threats on my life, and spiritual and emotional friends have disappeared, fading away after I firmly remind them I stand where I stand, and there is fear in their eyes. I am told it is time to "retire," and time to end "your ministry," the only response I can give is "I have set my face towards Galilee". I have seen two seminary interns come with bright eyes, hoping to duplicate my ministry, and they run away in fear. And when asked "Aren't you afraid?" I simply smile and say, all I see is the broken body of Christ like I am broken in need of love--and they run!
We begin this week with "The Annual Forty Day Time of Prayer and Fasting for Gospel Nonviolence (July 1-August 9), remembering the dropping of the two atomic bombs (Hiroshima, August 6 and Nagasaki, August 9, 1945). And I am choosing to focus my fasting on the violence shown on our streets towards our brothers and sisters without housing, violence shown in our apathy and uncaring both personally and politically. I will eat two light meals a day, one early in the morning, and the other after sunset! The prayer at the bottom of the page was written for praying one or more times a day. It is decades old!
I am reminded of the words of Kedrri Ni Dochart thigh:
"This invisible line, a border that skims the water I have just emerged from, as though it were a dragonfly and has been the cause of such sorrow and suffering, such trauma and loss, that I ran from its curves and coursing flow at every first chance."
I have walked the thin lines of aloneness, of always being misunderstood, of people walking away, and of a ministry that appears irrelevant to many.
I am reminded of? how the "Oystercatchers made a line out of their flight as the light made an end to that final day, and the Prayer of St.Brendan rings true:
'Help me to journey beyond the familiar and into the unknown.
Give me the faith to leave old ways
and break fresh ground with You
to be stronger than each storm within me.
I will trust in the darkness and know that my times, even now are in Your hand.
Tune my spirit to the music of heaven,
and somehow, make my obedience count for You."
Ultimately my calling, our calling is not to be successful, but the call to faithfulness.
And I have truly learned more than ever in this age of social media, smartphones, fighting, and division what kindness is:
"Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness. How you ride and ride thinking the bus will never stop, the passengers eating maize and chicken will stare out the window forever. Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho lies dead by the side of the road. You must see how this could be you, how he too was someone who journeyed through the night with plans and the simple breath that kept him alive. Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth. Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore, only kindness that ties your shoes and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread, only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say It is I you have been looking for, and then goes with you everywhere like a shadow or a friend. — Naomi Shihab Nye, “Kindness”
------------------
30th Anniversary Celebration
Victor’s Pizza
6 p.m.
November 9, 2024
WE ARE BEGGARS! WE REALLY NEED MONEY1
FOR FOOD, SOCKS, HARM REDUCTION AND OTHER SERVICES!
P.O. Box 642656
415-305-2124
pay pal
(Temenos and Dr. River seek to remain accessible to everyone. We do not endorse particular causes, political parties, or candidates, or take part in public controversies, whether religious, political or social--Our pastoral ministry is to everyone!
Temenos Catholic Worker
P.O. Box 642656
San Francisco, CA 94164
领英推荐
Dr. River Sims, D.Min, D.S.T.
PRAYER
THAT ALL PEOPLE—BELIEVERS AND NON-BELIEVERS-UNITE IN PROCLAIMING THE TRUTH
OF THE NONVIOLENT JESUS AND HIS WAY OF NONVIOLENT LOVE OF
FRIENDS AND ENEMIES.
Abba, in the name of Jesus
we ask you to send the Holy Spirit
to gather the Churches together,
so that with one heart, one mind, and one voice
they may proclaim as God’s Way
Jesus’ Way of Nonviolent Love of all people
—friends and enemies—
and thereby proclaim that
violence is not the Christian Way,
violence is not the Holy Way,
violence is not the Gospels’ Way,
violence is not the Apostolic Way,
violence is not the Way of Jesus,
violence is not the Way of God,
and thus set Christians free forever
from bondage to the unholy,
unapostolic, un-Christlike ways
of the false gods and theologies
of violence and enmity.
We plead this grace
so that the Nonviolent Lamb
may be our Lord in deed,
as well as, in word and sacrament.
We request this gift
so that the Christian Community may be
—for afflicted humanity—
a faithful witness to Jesus’ Way of overcoming evil.
We implore this healing
so that the Church may be an authentic extension in time and space
of the Way of the Lamb of God, of the Way of the Nonviolent Jesus,
which is the Way to renew the face of the earth and to Eternal Salvation for each and all.
Our Lamb has conquered! Let us follow Him!
SAME ENERGY!
Put me in jail, then. Throw me behind your religious bars since you have dubbed me a breaker of your law. I live my days in the courtroom of your criticism. I move unbothered under the gaze of your gavel. I have no interest in defending myself before your bench. Go on, clench your fists, raise your voice to make your point. Type the rebuke that you must make on my page. Who asked you to come through anyway? Is this rage your duty? We operate under a different set of obligations and get worked up to frustration for different reasons, even though we both claim fidelity to God. If you were interested, which I doubt, here is where my passion lies: feed the hungry, clothe the naked, heal the sick, defend the rights of the orphan, plead the widow’s cause, and woe to you who unjustly enforce God’s Law. Why spend your energy policing me when that same energy could be used to love, fiercely? Justice, mercy, and humility. Go learn what this means. Drew Jackson
#spiritualty;#Jesus;#homelessness;