Mission Journal Archive July 12, 2004 - December 21, 2006

MONDAY, DECEMBER 31, 2007

The first time the two of them came, the sun had already journeyed two hours in the eastern summer sky, and two of us were on site. This morning, as they emerged from the car, I recalled Joaquin’s mother calling last week asking if he might help building the home. This morning as his mother and I talked, Joaquin said little. Really, he did not say anything at all.

He answered questions, but didn’t talk. Conversation or dialogue was not in the cards this morning. Rather, and we both seemed to know it, it was a day to get behind us. Silence, there really is nothing wrong with it, is there? Silence would get us through the day. A nod to one another in passing, a word here and there, but we both knew, today, we would spend most of our time together silently.

Joaquin and his mother and I shook hands. Then she got into her car, looked at Joaquin one more time, smiled—silently saying, “I know it is hard,” started the car, and drove off. Joaquin and I stood side by side, watched the red break lights flash, the green car slow, and then circled to the north, out of sight.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2007

You might expect a letter or a journal entry about this time of year extolling the virtues and programming and the difference the Mission makes in people’s lives and hinting, not very subtly, about the financial need of the Mission. (Hmm…maybe just writing that last line is doing that.) Instead, though, I have been thinking about a recent letter to the editor. The letter writer could not comprehend how a homeless person standing next to a freeway off-ramp could have the nerve to hold a sign in one hand asking for help while pulling a cell phone out of their pocket and answering it with their other hand. The writer was so riled their demeanor seemed to have left annoyance behind some time ago and was quickly gaining on anger. Perhaps it was out of similar frustration that I could not help myself and wrote to the editor saying:

‘Tis the season…and there is angst. Self-proclaimed Christians cry, “Put Christ back into Christmas.” Anger overpowers love as the people cry out, “store clerks should say ‘Merry Christmas,’ not ‘Happy Holidays!’” Christianity claims marginalization, while the poor and dispossessed struggle.

‘Tis the season and a voice declares, “There is a person on the side of the road with a sign asking for help. Me? Help! Why?! They are talking on a cell phone! No one who has a cell phone needs my help! Let them sell their cell and use the money to buy food!”

‘Tis the season and maybe our thoughts need a little reframing. What matters more, the poor have a cell phone or they are homeless, cold, and hungry? We can choose to rethink the cell in terms of love, rather than property—perhaps a sister gave her brother a phone because of love and worry and a concern to stay in touch. Or maybe, the cell is simply a lifeline as it is for many of us.

‘Tis the season and if Christ is to reenter Christmas it must be through the thoughts and deeds of the people, not in a slogan spoken by a store clerk. Christ reenters Christmas when we give to the poor on the roadside, to the extreme weather shelters of Yakima, to the startup homeless shelter in Wapato, and to any of the shelters found in our various communities.

‘Tis the season and only we can bring the Christ into it.

There seems a fear threaded through society that someone is going to get something for nothing. If we allow such a fear to fester an attitude boils among us that it might be better to do nothing than take a chance that our monies and time will be wasted on those “who just aren’t trying.” The season of Advent turns such thinking upside down and calls for the simplicity of hope. Hope that grace is not an ethereal concept of other world—other day, but an ethereal reality of now located smack in the middle of us.

When the door is opened and the homeless—the alcoholic, the veteran, the schizophrenic, the drug user, the expectant mother who arrived on foot, by car, or by donkey—enter in, then grace occurs and hope is transformed into joy; for salvation has occurred.

So, I ask doors be opened to those whom we might fear…just a little. Open doors the best you can in your community. And help us to do it the best we can. The Mission is in partnership with the startup homeless shelter, Noah’s Ark Drop-in Center and Shelter, in Wapato. Begun just months ago, they average more than thirty drop-ins a day and house eight to fifteen per night. The Mission collaborates with Noah’s Ark, because we have neither the skills nor the resources to provide housing and food to our communities poor and homeless. Having already experienced weeks when the high temperature of the day does not break freezing your help is invaluable to saving lives in our neighborhood.

How might you help? A financial contribution is best at the moment, for Noah’s Ark greatest struggle is meeting over-night housing, utility, and food expenses. The cost to house one individual for a night is $15.00 and the cost of a meal is about a $1.00.

(A side note here. I don’t know how many times I have heard that the poor know so much better than those with money, how to give. But what does that look like? How does it feel? I arrive at the shelter around 11:00 in the morning a few days ago. Lonnie showed up with a can of chili, and asked for an opener. The opener was found and Lonnie went off to open the can and get the microwave going. I continued with the conversation I was having. Maybe five minutes had gone by when Lonnie got our attention and said there was more chili for anyone who wanted it. Lonnie and his partner already had Styrofoam cups in their hands, perhaps a third full, and on the counter were three more. I really…I’m not kidding, I really had to stand there a moment and let it sink in. Here was Lonnie and his partner, who I know had not eaten that morning, offering three helpings of chili from one small can. And all I knew for sure…I wouldn’t have done it, if it were me.)

A buck for a meal and fifteen dollars for a bed might not sound like much, but it adds up quickly when trying to feed thirty people during the day and house eight to fifteen people at night, seven days a week.

If you would like to help, please go to the Missions website, www.yakamamission.org, and click on “Contributions.” Next click the button “Make a Donation” under the Donate Today column. Fill in the form and press the “Review Order and Continue” button. When you reach the “Review your Payment” page, please click on “Include Note” (it is right under “Donation” in the Item area of the invoice) and write Noah’s Ark… that will insure the donation makes it to the homeless shelter. If you would like to make this donation in the name of someone else…in the “Include Note” area, write his or her name and email address. I will send them an email letting them know about the donation in their name and add their email address to the MissionJournal so they have the opportunity to become a part of the Mission family.

There is an Irish Proverb, “It is in the shelter of each other that the people live.” Maybe in this Advent season we can become a sheltering grace-filled people who grasp the hope of the poor and transform it to Joy.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 14, 2007

A privilege of mine is students, seminarians, teachers, and professors send papers, from time to time, they think might be of interest. A pastor/seminarian friend sent one a while back whose emphasis pertained to privilege. A section of this paper spoke to one reason why, five years ago, the Mission moved away from a “work trip” model to a “learning and serving” model for those who come to serve the Mission’s community.

In her paper Leaving the House of Privilege: Psychological and Theological Implications of Privilege; Kate Johansen speaks about participating in many mission trips to Mexico, Nicaragua, and Yakima during her years as a youth. Today she finds the core too many of these trips is charity and that the operating premise is, “teaching our youth how to do good by helping people who are less fortunate than [themselves].” In large part, the trips were designed to help youth move into awareness of their privilege “and how much they take for granted.” Johansen goes on to note, “Yet, there is almost never a discussion about how and why we’ve come to be so privileged. Those involved see poverty and oppression, but these problems stay in Mexico when they head back to their privileged lives.” When work is done for people, in oppressed poor communities by people of privilege from communities of wealth, the result is charity. There is nothing wrong with charity, in fact, people will die (and do die) without it. Johansen’s argument is for us not to confuse charity with justice. Charity helps now, gives life now, makes a difference now, and must be done now. Justice, though, is systemic change and that can only begin when the privileged begin discussing and asking questions “about how and why we’ve come to be so privileged.”

Academic theological reflections such as Kate Johansen’s give reason to think and explore why we do what we do—even our care for others. Bringing reflections such as hers and setting them on an open table calls for communal conversation. Conversation where the people—all of the people, enter their theology into the discourse. This conversation is academic, practical, reflective, laid back, tactile, adamant, giving, compassionate, considerate, and passionate, that develops roots in the listening and grows in action. It is a conversation for the young, the youth, the adult, and the elderly—of your culture and mine, where each voice is considered and honored.

The Missions website profiles people who are in relationship and willing to write a little about their connection with the Mission. The current profile went up the first of the month. The thoughts of Rachel and Rica, centered on mission, have elicited a number of comments. It seems appropriate to place their thoughts on the open table, alongside Kate’s, to help develop a communal conversation about mission.

Thoughts from a Yakama Christian Mission Learning and Serving Trip

From Rachel:
Working with the children at the Summer Fun Program was a blast! Doing the workshops was very interesting. They used fun movies and activities!

From Rica:
The recent trip to Yakama was my first mission trip. As some of you might have predicted, I got out of the trip far more than I gave. Yes, I, along with others, cleaned the goats’ water troughs, banged in t-posts for new electric fence lines, moved irrigation lines, moved lots of dirt and gravel around the foundation of the home the mission is building in the town of Harrah, dug a 3-foot-deep 2 x 2 post hole, mixed and poured concrete, and bucked hay. It was the first time I had done any of these. I’d like to think that our presence and effort were useful, or at least not too much of a hindrance.

If you think that’s impressive, wait until you hear what was given to me. I was given the opportunity to spend time with some folks from church, to get to know some of them at levels that would take much longer to achieve were we not being forged by the crucible of intense physical labor, 100-plus degree temperatures, and explorations of power, privilege, and oppression – all in the context of spirituality.

I was given the opportunity to meditate on and to consider prayerfully the following questions posed by Dave Bell, the pastor of YCM. “What is your walk with God? Who does it call you to be? What does it call you to do?”

I have to confess that I am largely a closeted Christian. I am often embarrassed to acknowledge that I attend church. I fear that others will judge me to be something I am not . . . judge me to be a particular sort of Christian . . . a right-wing, conservative, fundamentalist, evangelistic Christian. Out of fear that others will make inaccurate assumptions about my walk with God, I fail to volunteer the fact that I walk with God. I am less apologetic about my views of the misuse of power, how invisible privilege is to those who have it, and the extent to which oppression affects all of us.

Dave and Belinda Bell and Jill posed challenging questions. As we sat in the dirt at the build site, Dave told us that billions and billions of little critters live in the topsoil. “Is it right,” he asked, “that all those beings die in order for us to build a house to shelter one family?”

The goats raised on the farm are raised for meat. The meat feeds local families participating in celebratory events such as graduations. Belinda explained to us that the goats graze freely, and are slaughtered and butchered on-site. Their lives are far different from the lives of animals raised in feedlots and shipped to huge slaughterhouses. Perhaps whether goats lead peaceful lives and experience relatively peaceful deaths seems unimportant; I suggest another look. Given a choice, I would rather live with the fewest restrictions possible, and I would rather die at home than in an impersonal, crowded, loud institution. Who am I to say that my life matters more than a goat’s, or that my experiences are more valid than a goat’s? What is my walk with God?

Jill told us about Olga, the old matriarch of the goat clan. Nearing retirement, she understands the fact that responsibility goes with power. In her younger days, stray dogs once attacked the goats. Olga put herself between the dogs and the rest of the goats. She nearly lost her life in the process. Her tattered, stubby ears serve as reminders of the struggle that ensued when Olga used her power responsibly. Am I willing to accept the burden of using my power and privilege conscientiously? What is my walk with God?

When the farmer next door decided to plant alfalfa on all of his property, he created an agricultural monoculture. In order to create his single-crop operation, he had to destroy the diverse vegetation of the existing eco-system. What sorts of flora and fauna were lost in that process? What is my walk with God?

So, what do I do with all this perspective? I could decide that my existence costs more than it is worth, but I don’t think that’s the conclusion I am meant to draw. I think I am called to honor the sanctity of ALL life. I am called to humbly recognize that every day something or someone dies in order for me to live.

If being a Christian means walking through life in a state of mindfulness . . .

If being a Christian means giving thanks everyday for the sacrifices made in order for me to live a life of relative luxury . . .

If being a Christian means believing that the many deaths, which allow me to live, are the broken body and blood of Christ, that life and death are communion . . .

If being a Christian means these things, maybe I can declare myself, fearlessly, and unapologetically to be a Christian.

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 01, 2007

Horse, nose in snow,
Eating grass, lawn really.
Snow lands on back, melts,
slides down wither.
Path, wanders across lawn,
as horse plows snow with nose.

White Swan People to People bus arrives.
Two half doors open,
three people step on.
Doors close—
snow slides down window.
Path across parking lot,
as bus plows snow with tire.

Neighbor says “hi.”
Not easy these days.
Son, seventeen, pregnant and needing marriage.
“Is it right?” Neighbor asks.
Path rambles between neighbors,
as grace plows space with conversation.

Café on an early snowy morning,
Horse outside the window,
Eating grass—
lawn really.

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2007

A coffee cup sat on the table, along with a book, a notebook, and a pen. The table sat in the southeast corner of the coffee shop with a bench on each side. This corner, unlike the southwestern corner, has a window on each wall; it’s a nice location on a cold morning, one or the other window allows morning light to stream into the room. The coffee cup casts a shadow.

The morning school bell rung fifteen minutes ago, the students are gone, and there's a new tone to the room. The cook takes a break, sits down at the southwestern corner table, and lights a cigarette—the coffee shop isn’t really in the United States, so state legislated non-smoking laws don’t really apply. Four tables down from the cook on the eastern wall sits a woman finishing a plate of eggs, bacon, and biscuits, arguing with a companion on the other side of the table—I don’t have the eyes to see her acquaintance, then again, I doubt if I would have had the eyes to see Mary’s angel, Gabriel, either.

In the now mostly empty room, the woman who earlier served me coffee at the counter begins wiping tables. Starting in the center of the room she works towards the outer tables in a circular motion. Neither left or right, north nor south, she cleansed the tables as if walking a labyrinth.

More to herself than to me she says, “hi” as she wipes the neighboring table. The short sleeve of her shirt moves up and down as the cloth circles counter clockwise. “Nice tattoo,” I mentioned as it appears from beneath her sleeve.

“I got it three weeks ago,” she said.
“Oh? It’s beautifully done. It’s a dove isn’t it?”
“Yes…Mourning Dove.”
“How did you choose it?”
“I got it to remember my sister. She just died.”
“Oh…I’m sorry…How did you decide on the art?”
She smiled, sort of, “Mourning Dove was her name,” she said as she circled to the next table.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2007

Why do trees along the river
Lean so far out o’er the tide?
Very wise men tell me why, but
I am never satisfied;
And so I keep my fancy still,
That trees lean out to save
the drowning from the clutches of
the cold remorseless wave.
Alexander Posey (Chickasaw-Creek)

They say the young are dying. Will anyone care?

Soldiers returning home are dying at unprecedented numbers. They are surviving battle, but not home. Life that meant something yesterday does not today. At two times the national norm, young soldiers are dying. Will anyone care?

Modern history says, no. Modern history indicates society would rather look away than focus and come into awareness of a problem that might raise uneasy questions about the past—about decisions made, or not made—that cause young to die after the battle is left. For decades, young Native people of America have taken their lives at two times the national norm. Society has not noticed, nor seen, nor experienced the deaths of Native thirteen to twentfour year-olds as a crisis in the land. This does not endear confidence that society will notice or care about twenty to twentyfour year-old returning soldiers.

In this land are there—can there be, can we be—trees leaning…

…out to save
the drowning from the clutches of
the cold remorseless wave.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2007
Many things can be said about fall. Quiet and tranquil are not two of them. Yes, leaves changing their color are very cool, and it is nothing less than breath taking, year after year, as the coolness of fall scrapes the valley pallet of an array of greens, slowly placing reds, yellows, and oranges in their place, finally taking up a windy brush mixing and blending until the pallet is a crescendo of living-dying color. There is virtue in the implied tranquility of color-filled leaves breeze-nudged from branch on a swirling journey to mating ground. Through the simple act of leaf settling on ground does fall fill springs need of fertile soil for rebirth. On the farm a similar fertile need is found, a need that brings forth life in the spring, but cracks the peace and stillness of fall.

It seemed longer than twenty days. Early October and the fertile need kicked in big time with the goats and sheep. It was as if every day, for all twenty days, another board needed to be added to the fence separating the boys and girls. Ewes and does, ram and buck, all wanted to be on the other side of the fence. And “the other side of the fence” isn’t about greener grass. It could be said this is about spring lambs and kids, but don’t be fooled. Nope, this is about that deeply embedded wealth that is God given…only trouble is is it doesn’t feel like wealth with a fence between the boys and girls—which leads to one and only one sheep/goat question, “where is the hole in the fence!?”

It is amazing what a goat or sheep will go through to find a hole in the fence during breeding season. They will nudge and work the smallest of holes, just to get nose to nose, and if they can take advantage of a hole and squeeze a head through, it is a good day, a little frustrating, but a good day. Hour after hour, day after day, for twenty days, a continuous search goes on for unity.

Feeding time and they all just look…with big eyes. At least at first, as if they think a sad expression will open the gate allowing access to the other side of the fence. But when the flake of hay hits the feed trough and it becomes clear this moment is about food and not open gates, they yell. Yell, LOUDLY, as if to say, “how could you do this to us! Let us on the other side of the fence!” Of course, they are not thinking if they stay on their side of the fence until the first of November, their babies will birth on a warm spring day when the ground is birthing grass in the pasture. No, they aren’t thinking about spring. It…really is…all about fall, cool weather, the recognized inner wealth, and the need to breed.

Oh, but life changes, as we all know it changes. And seasons are but a series of micro-seasons. The indomitable writer of Ecclesiastes reminds us of this reality, “for everything there is a season…

a time to be born, and a time
to die;
a time to plant, and a time to
pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time
to build up;
a time to weep, and a time
to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time
to dance…” (Ecclesiastes 3: 1-4)

It is a season of dancing…and breeding. Saturday the gates swung wide. Does and buck, ewes and ram found the hole in the fence and courtships began. Courtships full of dancing and nudging, murmuring and yelling, playing and fighting. The air has changed, deep seeded wealth blocked by yesterdays fence, is now floating on the cool breeze, and they all know it. Life changes, from the breath-taking palette of the valley floor to the breath-taking dance of breeding, it is a time of change and life.

Fall, it is anything but quiet and tranquil.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2007
Something different is going on down the road, fifteen minutes west of the mission. As October closes out and the apple harvest winds down, there is one harvest going full bore—corn. Now corn harvest happens every year, but this year, well, let’s just say you have to see it to believe it.

It’s a stretch to say this is the year of the corn, but not much. As fuel prices topped $3 per gallon, the U.S. political landscape concerning biofuel changed. This governmental change toward biofuel production is an at last moment for many people—finally, a movement towards sustainable fuels! However, when the impetus of change is based in the pocketbook of Americans, it is advisable to consider what impacts legislated biofuel might have as harvesters move through the cornfields of the United States—and other nations such as Yakama. As always, when reflecting on issues concerning society as a whole, it is well to begin reflection from the viewpoint of those who have the least voice—land, animals and the poor.

The United States produces forty percent of the world’s corn, and is responsible for over half the world’s corn exports. That’s a lot of corn. This being the case, it makes a big difference when legislative acts create structural change by moving corn from animal and human consumption to fuel production. A fair question is what does this mean to the poor? C. Ford Runge and Benjamin Senauer comment, that filling a 25 gallon SUV tank with pure ethanol (this is unlikely, ethanol is used more as an additive than in its pure state) requires “over 450 pounds of corn—which contains enough calories to feed one person for a year.”[1] Biofuel production from the standpoint of neighbor is staggering. Almost half of Mexico’s 107 million people live in poverty and count on corn tortillas as a primary source of calories. By the end of 2006, the cost of corn flour had doubled in Mexico creating a public outcry and leading president, Felipe Calderón, “to cap the prices of corn products.”[2] There is a need for research, development, and production of biofuel, but it cannot come at the cost of health to those living in poverty.

Whereas the poor need the corn kernel to live, the land needs the organic of the cornstalk. For ages, farmers have known good crops require old plant life to find its way back into the soil. Organic materials, such as cornstalk, embedded into the soil allow beneficial bacterial life to begin. The breakdown of plant leads to humus, which is a vital component to a soils ability to hold water and provide nutrients to new plant life. Nothing new here, while ages ago farmers may not have known about the microbial benefit of organics in the soil, they certainly could see that when soil animal life increased—such as worms, soil color changed to deeper browns and blacks, and the land became more productive. Healthy, living land has always needed the remains of above ground life. Only through this cycle does land continue as—be—become—life-giving soil.

Grasping the lands need of organic material is paramount during the early stages of biofuel production. The biofuel industry is moving towards using more than just the corn kernel for production, but much of the plant as well. The organic stalk and leaf residue once left for the soil after combining is now windrowed (everything other than the kernel is placed into long rows about three feet wide) and formed into bales measuring three feet by four feet by eight feet. Where yesterday most of this organic residue was plowed and disked into the soil, today these organic bales are moving off the land and towards biofuel production and feed for animals such as cattle. It may take years to grasp what it means for the land to lose tons of organic matter, but historical hints such as the dust bowl should give pause as society moves towards biofuel production.

Moving cornstalk from land health to cattle feed is reflective of biofuels potential affect on animals. Cattle loose feed quality when low protein cornstalk replaces higher protein corn kernels. However, loss of quality does not begin nor stop at the cattle trough. As biofuels hunger for corn increases, land currently producing other crops will experience the plow and be placed into corn. This change locally has moved acreage from hay production to corn production. This has resulted is less hay and grain for animals and created a need for feed supplements. Supplements span the imagination, from cornstalk to potato peels, but depend mostly on local crop production. Supplements, therefore, change depending on the geography of an animal. One supplement that is not largely geographical is a byproduct of the biofuel industry—distillers’ grain. Distillers’ grain, an ethanol byproduct, is the biomaterial remaining after removing starch from grains such as corn. While distiller’s grain continues to hold some of protein, fiber, vitamins and minerals of the original grain, it is “low-quality roughage” according to Daryl Strohbehn, the Extension beef specialist at Iowa State University.[3] Like land, animals have little voice in biofuel production. A fair question on their behalf might be, is an animal’s life better eating distillers’ grain, potato peelings, or cornstalk, rather than the high protein of hay and grain? One reason to ask is that many if not most meat animals have been removed from their open, land-based lifestyle that comes naturally—grazing (an all day feeding event), to an enclosed confinement lifestyle—feedlot (a once or twice a day feeding event). When taking an animal away from its natural lifestyle, is it too much to ask on their behalf that they eat the best of feed?[4]

There is a need to move away from petroleum-based fuel towards sustainable fuel. However, if it is the pocketbook and three or four-dollar gas driving this change, rather than the wellbeing of creation, the likeliness of inflecting hurt is real. This is a faith question and a holistic approach needs integration into the biofuel movement. This approach calls the biofuel movement to understand that land, plant, animal, water, air, and human life are deeply connected and what changes one, changes all. The alternative is lower fuel prices, unhealthy land, SUV’s with a full tank, and people too sick to think about what is going on fifteen minutes down the road.

[1] How Biofuels Could Starve the Poor , C. Ford Runge and Benjamin Senauer, From Foreign Affairs, May/June 2007 (http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20070501faessay86305/c-ford-runge-benjamin-senauer/how-biofuels-could-starve-the-poor.html)

[2] ibid

[3] Stretch hay with DDG , Kylie Gray, Successful Farming, August 2007

[4] This is not to imply that those who raise meat animals do not want their animals to eat the best of feed. On the contrary, I think those who raise animals, largely, are feeding the best feed available to their livestock. A question we might ask, as a society is, what choice of feed do we want to allow for animal consumption?

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2007
There is a new Autumn moment. One I never experienced as a child. It arrives at the end of the growing season, not at the height of harvest, but after the Fall Equinox when daylight no longer reigns and night holds sway with each new moonrise. It comes when the cool days of Fall remind the body winter is only a frost away. The moment comes at the end of harvest but it is not wrapped up in the need to get the last cutting of hay baled and off the ground, nor in harvesting corn earlage, nor the hops or the grapes. It emerges out of the backyard, sometimes the front yard, and on occasion it’s been known to sidle in from side yard. It comes from that piece of ground dedicated to family, the garden.

Gardens come in a verity of sizes, some large and others small, but the family garden size seldom has much to do with the societal mindset of bigger is better or more is wealthier. Instead, family size and diet have the greatest influence on size. Gardens are intimate and reflective of the family who plants them. No two are alike, they are created in many shapes and even elevations; some planted directly into the ground while others get a bit of a view from their raised beds. Some are weed free and beautifully manicured, while others live in a radical community of weeds and produce invoking wisdom to find balance between themselves and the land. Some are trellised, rising beans and tomatoes into the air opening foliage to full sunlight, while others lie close to the ground laying one branch on top of the next, insulating the fruit of its flower from the ground until offspring ripens into healthy self-propagating seeds. Few of these seeds, though, ever see the ground, but instead find themselves on the supper table.

First fruits are special. Eating the first summer tomato leads to the thought, “I will never get enough of this!” By summer’s end, tomato’s have been baked and broiled, canned, fried, and grilled, they have been found in rice, stew’s, juice, and soup, they have been dressed up, stuffed up, and scalloped. Quantity quickly outpaces family eating capacity, which leads to fruit showing up on the neighbors kitchen counter. That is, until the late summer moment arrives when the neighbor opens their door, sees me standing on their porch with another large basket of produce, and their smile and enthusiasm is not quite as grand as in June. It seems without fail, no matter how carefully the gardener tries to balance land and plant to family need, no matter how many bugs and rabbits and gophers came along and partake of plant and fruit, there is always an abundance as Autumn arrives.

In the Autumn of the year, when days shorten and weather cools, when the produce takes a little longer to ripen, when as much fruit that can be given away has been, when pantries are stuffed with canned pears, peaches, and beans, when the cook has used every known recipe to humanity and the supper table is now showing signs of experimentation, is when the new moment arrives. It literally walks in into the home with the last apple, bean, pepper, or cucumber.

Produce lies on the kitchen counter contrasting reds, greens and yellows. Even after a summer full of vegetables and fruit, it remains a pretty sight, which can’t help but to summon mystery. Mystery isn’t the moment though, though it is helpful as I begin looking around the kitchen, in the cupboards, in the pantry, in the drawers, even in the shed for canning jars. That is when the moment arrives, when I cannot find one, not even one, canning jar! It’s not so much that there isn’t a jar left, but the feeling that arrives when my eyes run across the shelves and stop at the mayonnaise jar. However, it is not a jar, not really. It might look like a jar, but can anything made of plastic be called a jar? After all, that thing, holding mayonnaise, on the shelf would never hold up to a boiling hot water canning bath! There are times when it doesn’t even look like a jar, but more like some type of upside-down plastic squeeze bottle. Now what’s that all about? Certainly not about canning!

I think my grandparents would have thought of this as a travesty. They could never have imagined such a state of affairs. I remember as a child showing up on the farm in the early summer and there on the back porch were rows of jars. Some were Ball, others Kerr, still others were Mason, but more than a fair share were regular old store bought mayonnaise jars. In the cellar there were rows of jars whose first life might have held mayonnaise but are now known as peach jars, pickle jars, or tomato jars. As I look for a jar to put up the last of the tomatoes, I cannot help to think that the mayonnaise jar of my parents, my grandparents, and even their parents was an innovation that moved society from the dreariness of living on dried, smoked, and salted foods, to a sweetened life of freshness, health and good nature in the midst of long, cold winters (okay, this might be a little hyperbole, but I can’t find a jar!).

THURSDAY, JUNE 21, 2007
Stringlines pulled and checked for square. Ground laid out and chalked. The earth is broken. The first JustLiving affordable house has begun. At the ground blessing/breaking celebration for the home, David Hacker commented, “The earth we live on is a gift for all people. This is the time to break ground in a new way, as a sacrament, like breaking of the bread; we are breaking the earth to allow us to build community.”

David ’s words led me to think of these words from the writer of Isaiah. “Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?”(Isaiah 58: 7) When I hear the ancient words of Isaiah in tandem with the current words of David, I hear a call for communal self-reflection. A self-reflection where the community opens itself to questioning the current treatment of earth and poor while intentionally creating cracks in societal structure that might open the opportunity of leading the whole towards a radical community of equity. Radical because all creation is consider kin—as if blood sister and blood brother. Community because that while the body is made of many individual aspects of creation, wholeness of the individual only occurs when all of creation lives as one. Equitable because all aspects of creation came into being with the same thought, the same power, the same intimacy.

Living towards a radical community of equity calls people into thought and experience through the simple act of breaking earth for a home. When done as if sacrament, thought and imagination delve deeper than what is typically experienced on the surface. While the surface celebration of an affordable home groundbreaking brings awareness to the home poor, sacrament asks community to deal with life lost or taken. Sacrament boldly reminds people that the earth is teaming with life in unimaginable numbers.

As the backhoe finished digging the under-floor area the other day, it was easy to see that at the northwest end of the foundation there had been a community of ants. After living in that place, that ground, for untold generations, thousands upon thousands of ants now scurried and struggled to find new identity and new home in the midst of chaos. Watching those ants reminded me that when the Mission’s compost piles are composting well, there are billions of thermophillic creatures in one gram of compost. When thinking of the tons of dirt moved this day and realizing the top few inches of healthy soil is not a lot different than a compost pile, I find it hard to imagine the untold billions of created life lost in the tons of earth moved that day. A radical community of equity acknowledges the need for housing (after all, the human does not do so well in below zero temperatures) while calling for human life to enter into a greater awareness and a deeper appreciation as to what is truly given (or taken) so human life might be lived. When the whole of creation is experienced as one—in equity, the soul begins to grasp the sacred significance of the life easily taken in the breaking of soil.

Whether it is breaking of bread or breaking of soil, when humanity becomes sympathetic to the loss of life in favor of human life, it is as if a temple curtain is torn and what could not be seen yesterday is today. Ants and microorganisms may not have much choice when a backhoe is claiming buckets of earth with each pass. Humans do though. And humanity is at its best when claiming mutuality with life lost and using that awareness to profess relationship with life living.

The JustLiving build is an attempt to move towards a mutuality of oneness…taking one step at a time. Living up to Isaiah’s expectations of justice by inviting the homeless poor into our homes is hard, but not impossible. In the building of just one home we begin constructing relationship not realized yesterday. When parents see their children sit down to their first meal in a home of their own, there is just a bit more comfort in their soul. If we, who are able, use our power and resources to construct a foundation of justice today, then tomorrow our children will find themselves in a natural kinship that is as organic as the earth. On that day, life of creation will find itself just-living.

FRIDAY, MAY 04, 2007
Today I am sending a response to the Journal entry of April 3 rd (the entry can be found on the Missions website). The April 3 rd entry brought in a large response, mostly from folk currently or historically tied to the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). The response presented today comes from José F. Morales, Jr., a theologian of color, who makes an interesting case about posterism and absentee advocacy.

Of the many responses to the April 3 rd Journal entry, I felt it important to pass on that which comes from the voice of people of color (note that the many voices who responded were both white and people of color whose concerns were overwhelmingly along the lines of Morales’). There are a few reasons for choosing Morales’ voice.

First, the Yakama Mission, as well as most of the historical mission sites, work and serve in communities of color. In a church whose greatest population are not people of color, I believe it is important to hear their voice first and foremost.

Secondly, just this last week another statistical analysis came out indicating that people of color are stopped and searched at rates much higher than white people (Latinos over two times higher and African-Americans were over three times higher). The church wants and needs to condemn practices such as these, but to do so with integrity, the church must first recognize the similar targeting that goes on within.

Last, the marches of this last Tuesday are a visual reminder that our society and church continues not to listen to people of color. Marches across the country showed thousands of people who raised their voice in concern of justice for people of color; the problem is that in all the pictures and in all the videos shown of that day, there were few participants who were not of color.

What follows is José F. Morales, Jr.’s response on the April 3 rd Journal entry. Know that the above words are mine and José may not necessarily agree with them. Listen to his words.

Posterism and Absentee Advocacy: A Response to the Denominational
Defunding of Yakama Mission

by José F. Morales, Jr.
Associate Pastor
Iglesia del Pueblo CC(DOC)
Hammond, Indiana

I sense that what has happened for my sisters and brothers at Yakama Mission--that is, the ceasing of financial support from Disciples Home Missions--was bound to happen, for that is what is to be expected when a denomination's commitment to communities of
color and economically deprived peoples is rooted solely in, what I call, "posterism" and absentee advocacy.  People of color and disenfranchised persons have always served as "poster children" for mainly white institutions, organizations, and even denominations, ever since post-civil-rights legislation was passed and diversity-loving sentiments became the "norm".  Posterism gives the powers that be the opportunity to clear their name from any accusations of racism, or classism, or negligence, or indifference.  Yet as long as we--that is, those in the underbelly of history--smile for the camera, our call to be heard will not be heard.  We are not poster children to be silenced by a snapshot.  We are co-workers in the vineyard of the Lord, and we want to be acknowledged as such and be supported for our work. We want to know that we are affirmed for our work
among el pueblo.  Not only that, we want to include the 'powerful' in our ministry, so that they may have an encounter with the liberating spirit of God and be liberated as well.  I am sure this is the sentiment of the priests and prophets as Yakama Mission.

Yet, posterism is not the only thing that plagues us as a mainline denomination.  Our call to social justice has been shallowly defined as writing checks, saying quick prayers, and speaking on behalf of the poor from a distance.  Those who thunder about social justice from their affluent pulpits incarnate a life of justice only in words.  This is what the Pentecostal liberation theologian Samuel Soliván calls "absentee advocacy."  I quote him at length:

"Whatever interest or concern the mainline church has had for suffering peoples is a cognitive praxis'; it is a kind of retreat.  Several of those who employ praxis as a methodological principle are 'absentee advocates' in the churches and communities they claim to represent.  Most North American liberation praxis has been reduced to scholarly theological forums, removed and distant from actual suffering.  Conceived rationally and divorced from the experience of oppression, this kind of praxis defends the vested interest of a middle class that substitutes cognition for pathos [i.e. 'suffering'].  It reduces orthopraxis to a slogan that maintains control in the arena of theological exchange.” (The Spirit, Pathos and Liberation: Toward an Hispanic Pentecostal Theology, Sheffield, ng.: Sheffield Academy Press, 1998, p. 66)

While the co-workers of the vineyard of the Lord at Yakama Mission are experiencing and engage pathos in real tangible ways and developing ministries orthopraxically, the denominational "powers that be" engage in theological discourse concerning the liberation of people like those who benefit for the life-saving, life-changing work of Yakama Mission. There is not much difference between distance and absence, for both lead to inaction, inaction that is embodied by Jesus' parables by Dives, who ignored
Lazarus to the point that Lazarus died at his feet. (Luke 16:19-31)

What needs to happen here is clear: the decision makers need to put down their books by Cone, Gutierrez, Tinker, and Machado, and engage in actual liberation work.  Only then will they give their hearts to ministries like Yakama Mission.  Only then will they give their wallets to ministries like Yakama Mission.

FRIDAY, APRIL 27, 2007
May is about here. Spring is on the verge of blooming forth. Warmer days, warmer nights, days hiking without heavy coats, the bloom of apple, peach, and nectarine trees, ducks in the slews with the first ducklings swimming alongside their mothers, lambs birthing and grass growing, winter is quickly becoming a memory.

May is about here, but there is more in the air than flower pedals from the apple trees. It’s something many of us miss, and I can’t say that I blame us for not knowing what more there is in the air. After all, I did not pay attention to the air prior to living in the lower Yakima Valley. I didn’t know how to listen, didn’t know I should listen, to the breeze, to the wind, to the voices drifting by.

Early spring brings them to the valley. The air changes with their arrival. They are people, like us. They are only doing the job hired to do. They are just trying to make a living. Yet their work causes the air to change from the lofty smell of the bloom to the earthy sweaty smell of fear.

The new arrivals go by many names, no one is any longer sure of the correct term. Some say Homeland Security, others INS, but mostly they are the people stopping cars at the corner. As another car is pulled over, the voices whisper across the valley, “it is José they stopped,” and the air fills with fear.

May is about here. It is that time to enforce the law. Enforce the law now, not later, because later the crops will be in full production and true enforcement means fewer people to harvest the food, which in turn leads to rising grocery prices. Then the people who have the real power get mad because their apple now costs a dollar. The new arrivals are not going to let that happen.

Nothing new and that is what is sad. For we have gone through this before and failed to learn. Yesterday it was our parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents who in the name of sameness took six-year-old children away from their parents and sent them off to boarding schools to live until they became sixteen years of age. Though we find that repugnant and question how that could have occurred, today we find it is us who in the name of—well, come to think of it, I’m not sure what the point is any longer. Let’s face it, the argument that people who work our farm fields are taking away jobs from American citizens hasn’t held water for years.—so, in the name of what we can no longer define, we become the people who round up parents and deport them, away from us and away from their children. Our failure to learn is leading to a deep fear in the land.

May is about here. Nature teaches us this is a time of resurrection. Bulbs become flowers, snow melts in the high country and rivers become strong, the land thaws allowing seeds to generate, and springs flow again. Maybe this can be the Spring of resurrection. Maybe if we listen closely to the voice that has been silenced and raise our voices on their behalf, maybe, just maybe we can quench the fear in our land. Listen.

Quiet. Can you hear it? Can you perceive it? Yeh, there it is. It’s an ancient voice, and old voice. Quiet, it calls for a hearing, it is speaking the language of a people hurt. Yep, it is becoming clearer, speaking of redemption, I can’t quite get it all, but in its quietness there is strength, listen…”your Redeemer, the Holy One…For your sake I will…break down all the bars…” there is more…” says the LORD, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters…Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old…” a call for something different? Oh, my fault there is more, quite myself…quiet…”I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” (Isaiah43: 14-19) Something new, a new thing, a new way of being, am I being asked to change in light of something deeper, quieter, ancient? Is it okay, really okay to let go of my preconceived ideas and thoughts…is it okay not to fear, is it okay that others in this land not fear, will there be enough for all?... quiet, the voice is speaking again…”Do not fear, or be afraid; have I not told you from of old and declared it? You are my witnesses! Is there any god besides me? There is no other rock; I know not one.” (Isaiah44: 8)

May is about here. Perhaps if we listen closely and perhaps if we speak forcefully, we will become the witness and our fear will fade and something different will come anew. “A new thing,” call it redemption, call it renewal, but in the end perhaps it is us, living with others, without fear as if we are one, as if we are family.

TUESDAY, April 03, 2007
The moon settled down this morning behind Satus Peak. What made its set so different this morning is it was just moments before sunrise. The full moon catching the full rays of the sun on a morning just below freezing in a sparkling clear valley, thanks to a nightly breeze, is a creative moment. There was just enough time to contemplate the easy slide of the moon behind and contrasting a peak looked upon by the people for ages, to wonder about their thoughts, to wonder about the changes in the land, to wonder what the yesterday meant to hawk above the ridge who could still see the moon now gone. In the moment of the rising sun, one feels as if the table has been set, the meal eaten, and grace has arrived.

It has been three weeks since the last journal entry. Mostly because I have rewritten this entry three times. Not edited, but rewritten. Maybe because this entry doesn’t seem as much as a journal entry telling whatever is on my mind at the time, but rather something that has been brewing for a while. Perhaps three weeks is an appropriate timeline for processing the questions that have come into the Mission from all parts of the United States and Canada over the course of the last three months.

“Please offer your frank opinions.” “How come the decision not to fund mission centers was made last December and we’re only now finding out about it?” “If ‘Disciples of Christ’ are not going to support the Yakama Mission, why should congregations of the United Church of Christ?” “What does this say in light of the anti-racism work you do?” “Can you survive?”

Ministry has felt more political than spiritual lately. Of course in whatever any of us do, there are times like this. It has been a time when Jill, Belinda, and I seldom go anywhere without fielding questions similar to those above. By now, some of you are asking yourselves what is this all about? Fair question. It is going to take some time to explain, so it is also fair to say this is a question about funding; funding pertaining to the historical giving from the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) (DOC) congregations. It is also fair to say that this entry pretty much focuses on funding from the DOC, so if this is not your gig, your idea of a high time, your concept of “it doesn’t get much better than this,” you might want to put a pot of water on the stove, add a little coffee, turn up the heat, close your eyes, listen to the brewing, and when it finishes, pour a cup, sit by the window, and enjoy a moment as the world wanders by.

For everyone else, last chance, this is a long one…okay then, let’s take a jump into what is going on.

Let’s start with a little background. The DOC has four historical mission centers in the United States, one being the Yakama Christian Mission. Last December, the DOC made the decision to discontinue Disciples Mission Funds (DMF) to any of the mission centers. The basic reasoning is congregations no longer give the same amount of dollars as they have in the past to support this work. In turn this has led the DOC to eliminate giving to the hands on missional work of the four historic centers in favor of prioritizing funding to clergy and congregational programs.

In addition to the Yakama Christian Mission, the other three “historic” centers are All Peoples Christian Center in Los Angeles, CA, Inman Center in San Antonio, TX, and Kentucky Appalachian Ministries in Berea, KY. Most of the DOC “historic” centers had their beginnings at the turn of the 20 th Century. At this time the “Social Gospel Movement,” a Christian movement that focused on caring for the immediate needs of the poor, influenced many different Christian movements, the DOC being one. At the 1919 Disciple Convention in Cincinnati, the people approved giving funds to the American Christian Missionary Society (ACMS). The ACMS, in turn, funded the purchase of land, the construction of the first buildings, and the organizing of a community first known as American Indian Tepee Christian Mission and today known as the Yakama Christian Mission (YCM).

Since YCM first opened its doors in 1921 there have been many questions. Questions of survivability in the depression ridden 30’s, appropriate growth in the 50’s, new visioning in the 60’s, contrast between the Mission and the Red Power Movement of the 70’s, congregational development of the 80’s, and new visioning at the turn of another century. Today the questions are different, but they continue to move us forward.

“Please offer your frank opinions,” more of a comment than a question, isn’t it?—is to grasp the freedom of conversation, telling what seems truthful, answering the question I think I heard, and probably working a little more from feelings than factual assessment. Frankness seems good place to lead from.

The loss of funding to the Yakama Christian Mission from the DOC amounts to roughly 25% of the Mission’s annual income. While this creates a bit of angst for the Mission, it creates an internal struggle for all of us; doesn’t it? First, it is important to acknowledge that the Mission has experienced a continual decrease of funding from the DOC for the last five years. This decrease has been in the area of 3%-8% per year. During this time, the Mission has implemented programs and contracted the oversight of a program on behalf of Disciples Home Missions, to maintain income. Second and most importantly, we all know the ones who hurt the most over losses of income to social justice centers are the people served—the poor, the children, and the oppressed. Yet in the third slot are all of us. We are a people who are deeply concerned with the welfare and wellbeing of the poor and the hurt. Otherwise we who do not find ourselves in the state of poverty would neither be writing nor reading this journal entry. We instinctually know that when anyone hurts we hurt as well, that we can never be whole without the other being whole, and that we can never be truly happy as long as the other suffers. When there is a lack of funding and the lack of services for those who suffer, we all ultimately hurt.

What does it mean to the Mission to loose roughly twenty-five percent of its budget on short notice? Another good question and we all instinctively know the answer. Our housing, clothing, food, healthcare are all based on the monies we receive. For most of us, a loss of one quarter of our income would be devastating. To cover a 25% loss in a year or two or three or even five would prove difficult if not impossible for most of us and that holds true for the Mission as well. However, for this year, the Mission received a grant from Week of Compassion (an arm of the DOC) for the Missions JustLiving affordable house build. This means, one, the affordable house the Mission is to build this summer for a lower income family will occur, and two, the Mission is sustainable through the end of 2007.

It is vital to understand why the elimination of DOC congregational funding is so important to a rural mission center. Think of it this way. In the hundred square miles surrounding the Yakama Christian Mission there are roughly 2000 addresses and maybe a dozen businesses. Of those 2000 addresses, eighty percent are in poverty. Of that eighty percent, roughly forty-five percent are in extreme poverty (that’s to say these families have a yearly income between $10,000 and $12,000). Under these conditions, local businesses have and are giving all they can, and the local people who do not find themselves in the eighty percent simply do not have enough resources to support the needed work. Compare this to DOC congregations throughout the United States and Canada who find themselves in urban and suburban settings. Think of the number of businesses within a hundred-mile radius. Then think of the multiple family income levels, from extreme poverty to extreme wealth, with the large number of financially comfortable in between the extremes found within this hundred-mile radius. The only way social justice work occurs in rural areas of poverty is through the support of people, businesses, and congregations who find themselves outside the community of poverty.

I believe outside funding is also telling as to what mission centers are whether they be rural or city based. Unlike businesses who find their identity in the reputation of a single person, like the CEO; Mission centers find their identity in the people of the church…people who are ardent about eliminating suffering. This is why the priority given to the care of the oppressed speaks so forcefully to the identity of the church. You've heard it said many times before “the church is only the church when it is on the side of the poor.” Mission center survivability, rightfully so, is based in the passion, compassion, and commitment of people who make it their vocation to change the world and alleviate the hurt of others.

The question of mission center funding in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) is an important one and one that cannot wait for the slow movement of the system. The only ones who can act on a timely basis are the people and their congregations. For Disciples of Christ congregations, this means considering the distribution of their offerings. For a number of years the funding for mission centers has come through the yearly Easter Offering. This offering not only has provided support for mission centers but, also the ministries of the Office of General Minister and President, Disciples Home Missions, and Overseas Ministries.

At this point, I would be remiss not to clearly say, the Yakama Christian Mission cannot survive without the help of the congregations of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). The work begun by our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents roughly 88 years ago in Cincinnati will regrettably close (in the healthiest manner possible) if the mission does not attain congregational help. We, the staff, also want to clearly say to the Disciples of Christ congregations, do not drop your giving to the Easter Offering. For justice work will never occur from just one perspective, but rather from the multiple views and richness of dreams of the whole body. Those words attributed to Paul, “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you,’ nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.’ On the contrary…If one member of the body suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honoured, all rejoice together with it.,” remind us that while work may be done alone, it is much greater, more effective, when we act in community as the body of Christ. (1 Corinthians 12:21-27) So, it is imperative to continue supporting the whole, while understanding that in today’s systemic structure the only way congregational giving will reach your mission centers is through designated offerings. Also know that the Yakama Christian Mission is open to finding new ways of creating support for all the mission centers and yearns for conversation with General, Regional, and Congregational supporters.

So, there you are. That is why things seem just a bit more political than spiritual these days. Yet, one cannot get away from the greater mystery that surrounds us and call us into the community of the head and feet. For when the moon sets as the sun rises it is impossible to ignore our great interconnectedness and know we have another moment with the mystery of creation. And it is in that mystery we find resurrection; as if the table has been set, the meal eaten, and grace has arrived.

TUESDAY, MARCH 13, 2007
I’ve been thinking about folk whose living history has some similarity with my family’s history. At one time, my family lived in a different country. Life had its ups and downs as life does. There care a time when the downs outweighed the ups and parents became concerned over the life and wellbeing of their children. Like others, they heard stories of other places. Places where their children might have a better life. Places where their children’s children might grow up with fewer struggles, have less pain, and experience less hurt. For the betterment of future generations they chose risk, packed their lives in what they could carry, and came to the land of another people. In the process, they didn’t bother asking the folks who were already in the land if it was okay to come. And when one thinks about it, how could they? When all a parent sees and hears and touches is the hurt of their children, they take action to stop it. Packing the history of family, leaving parents, brothers and sisters, friends, and the land of origin is hard, but a desire for the wellbeing of a child overpowers the loss.

It was an important journey, so important; they told and retold the story of journey and arrival. They told stories of their early years in this new land and the rejection of their children because their birth was somewhere else. They talked about their children birthed on this soil and their mistreatment because their parents were not. These people of yesterday gave a lot of thought to the treatment of their children and came to know a certainty—children are core to any family, community, or country. This knowledge led them to make one decision that would forever affect the land and its people. They created a law that became a cornerstone to the treatment of children and a legacy to the people who had come before.

The 14 th Amendment gave us law saying children born in the United States are automatically citizens. It matters little where their parents come from, who their parents are, or what others think of their parents; if a child is born on US soil the baby is a citizen.

The 14 th Amendment was an amazing selfless act of our ancestors. They looked to the past, remembered the hardship of family(s), and then created a structure of hospitality where no one would ever live their experience of humiliation.

Imagine this. It is today. We find ourselves in a hospital. We are that ever mindful “fly on the wall” watching what is going on in the room. A future mother and father are in the room with nurses and a doctor. They are having a baby or about to. There is energy, excitement, and love filling the space: breathing, talking, wiping a brow, anticipation. Then it happens. Slowly, intentionally, yet rather quickly a baby is born. The doctor holds the baby for a moment then gently lays the child on the mother’s breast. The doctor slowly rises, looks at the mother, glances at the father, and then says, “at this time we need to inform you that since you are undocumented parents, we cannot give your child automatic healthcare. Yes, automatic healthcare is available to US citizens, and yes because your child is born in this hospital in the United States, she is a citizen, but the government says we cannot be fully certain of this truth until you complete a lengthy application and approval process.” The parents stand and lay there stunned. The baby in its infinite newborn wisdom, becomes silent, rolls its eyes, thinks “this must be a bad dream,” and goes to sleep.

Sure, the story stretches the truth a little. I doubt the baby is putting together full sentences yet. But thanks to the 2005 Deficit Reduction Act, the rest of the story is more truthful than not.

Last Monday the state of Washington became the first state to sue the federal government over the rule that prohibits automatic health care to the US born children of undocumented people. Since the Bush administration first interpreted the federal rule last November, the cost of providing care has risen rather than lowered. Not all that surprising, I’ve seldom heard of labor cost going down when paperwork goes up.

The hurt of this ruling, though, does not reside in its monetary cost. From a secular standpoint, it is damaging to everyone when the government creates hoops for its citizens to jump through to prove they are citizens. Not only does it go against the grain of the14 th Amendment, but its underlying tone places a fair portion of the civil rights movement under foot. Consider that the ruling does not target all newborn citizens in the United States. Rather, its primary focus is towards those children of color, from families of color, whose origins are mostly in Latin America. If one would want to use the term “systemic racism,” this is the place to use it. Additionally, the ruling targets those citizens who have the least voice (can’t get much less voice than a newborn baby to undocumented parents). And think about this, if the government begins a policy of questioning the legitimacy of a newborn’s citizenship, who is to say, they aren’t coming after your children next? Hmm, does it seem like we’ve heard this questioning of citizenship, who is in and who is out, in the past? Weren’t there similar examples in our high school history class? Haven’t we walked through museums condemning the singling out of people based on their parental heritage?

Then from a faith perspective isn’t this ruling simply wrong and hurtful? Pick you faith, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, the various Native-American religions, as well as most world religions, when in comes to caring for the children don’t they all essentially say, maybe even command, care for the child in your midst? Ask no questions, care for the child. Place no conditions, no loopholes, no hoops, no paperwork, and no process in the way, if a child is in your presence, care of them. They have the right to full and immediate health care regardless of who their parents are and where they come from.

What might we do if we gave preference to the health and wellbeing of children ahead of a deficit reduction? Would we raise our voice in opposition? Would we speak because the oppression of one is the oppression of all? Or would we speak because the oppression of one is the oppression of one? Would we speak from a sense of social and ethic duty? Or would we speak from our religious heritage to stop the hurt of our neighbor?

Our parents before us were able to recognize the hurt of others. They did their best to create an amendment to stop that hurt from occurring again. Are we to become the people who forget the struggle of those who have gone before us? Or can we be a people who see the opportunity to take justice another step forward and commit ourselves deeply in favor of those with less voice.

SUNDAY, MARCH 04, 2007
When the snow falls, as it did on Saturday, steadily and lightly, you’ve got to take some time and soak it in. Understand, by this time of the winter I’ve had enough of the cold, enough of the frozen ground, enough of the mud every time the ground thaws, and enough of snow that will not melt. Yet all of that doesn’t matter, when the snow drops out of the sky in a particularly unhurried manner on a Saturday morning, I find myself quieting, if only for a moment.

An hour after the snow began, Katherine and I found ourselves at the high school hog barn. Snow is still falling but the quietness my body had felt an hour earlier had taken a trip. I haven’t a clue where it had gone, but it wasn’t in the hog barn. Rather, everything the snow is on a Saturday morning, the hog barn isn’t.

Thirty pigs and twenty high school youth together in one building has unexplainable dynamics and a fair amount of energy. Add to it the excitement of snow outside and it everything goes up a notch. Add to that a morning when the stalls are being cleaned and, well let’s say, the energy inside one hog barn is enough to light a small town.

For a pig, feeding and watering is in the top five of the most exciting things that happen during the week. Each day, one or two folk show up to check on the pigs and to feed and water. This moment calls for a fair amount of excitement on the pigs behalf. No one really knows if the pigs are more excited to see the two-legged folk or the food they bring with them. But everyone likes to think it is themselves and not the food—yah, right. These days the pigs are getting a corn based meal. It looks and tastes little bland to me, but they don’t seem to mind. It is a dry meal though and the pigs thoroughly enjoy their water. There’s a lot to be said for balance.

This is all to say, come Saturday morning, these are well fed, well watered, full of energy pigs. When youth enter the stalls with pitchforks and begin cleaning, the pigs can hardly stand themselves. They seem to be sure these folk are there for their enjoyment and play. Squealing and a low barking fill the barn as they run around their stalls playing their own brand of “pig tag.” When two to four pigs play tag as you’re trying to clean the stall, with a pitchfork, it leads to some exciting times (the pigs are already excited, this is more about the youth’s excitement). After all, a pig lives its life at knee height (our knee that is) or a little lower. Which means when a pig flings its hind end around, just to show it can (they like to show off their athletic ability and it is even better when it causes the other pig to miss the tag), contact is right about at the knee. The fun of a pig takes on new extremes when they have one of those two-legged animals down in the straw with them—they’re just sure this was a choice to join in the tag game (and the laughter of the two-leggeds outside the pen seems to stoke the pigs to more energy and more fun, which rises the “outside the pen” laughter as the two-legged animal is buried in week-old straw which has its own special pungent smell).

After a week of water and manure soaking into the straw, the straw is rather heavy. As time goes by the pigs quite down, at least that is, as much as a pig quiets down, and the pitcher of straw becomes quieter and perhaps a little more thoughtful. Cleaning stalls are a slow effort, but in time, the straw finds its way to the outside of the stall. Not everyone is able to show up each week, so as one stall is finished, youth move on to the next, and start all over.

An hour or two later, the stalls are cleaned, new straw fills the pen end to end, some pigs are eating while others stretch hooves out across the new straw, and a contentment and quietness (at least as quite as a pig will ever become) fills the barn. Youth stand at the open door at one end of the barn watching the snow fall and talking about whatever is important in teenage life. Adults stand at the open door at the other end of the barn, watching the snow fall, talking about school board meetings, politics, and feeder cattle prices.

And the snow falls. And the quieting takes place. And the spirit is communal.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2007

The band played last night. No, not “The Band” who played with Dylan, Clapton, Dr. John, Joni Mitchell, and others (for those of you old enough to remember), but rather this was the Middle and High School band of White Swan. The band opened an evening event recognizing youth for their academics and involvement in school.

It was quite a thing to behold. After all, it was only three years ago, the band struggled with half a dozen youth. Inadequate funding for rural schools and the crippling effect of No Child Left Behind had led to fewer monies for all the art programs. However, a concerted effort to keep and rebuild the band led to a night where twenty or more youth entered the gym and filled the space with music and a little awe. After the presentation, there was a chance to talk with the youth of the band. Their energy, their desire, their commitment made it clear that music is giving them an opportunity to express themselves in a manner they cannot in typical academics. Of more consequence, music is allowing them to recognize a broader self, a self that is more than the individual moving towards a communal identity.

I find it interesting that 93 percent of Americans agree the arts are vital to providing children with a well-rounded education. Eighty-six out of a hundred of us believe an arts education will improve children’s attitudes toward school.[1] Yet forty-two states implemented budget cuts to art funding in 2003.[2]

It seems as if, somewhere in our gut, we know the arts make a difference in the very being of our children. We seem to know there is value in music, painting, dance, singing, as well as other forms of art, and that it influences our core self. When talking to folk about art, there seems to be a belief that participating, viewing, and experiencing art leads to better lives, calmer attitudes, and thoughtful reflection. Moreover, when we do get out of our gut and into the head, it is hard to miss a “60 Minutes,” or a “Nightline” segment telling us that when children are involved in art, they do better academically.

Why is it then, as a people, we do not place the arts at the heart of all our public schools? And yes, all is the important word here. For we will all talk to a parent or youth this summer who as a member of a band or a chorus or a dance troupe will visit Europe or Asia. Now there is nothing wrong with that, but it does lead to a few questions: How many of those will come from poor inner city or rural schools? Are we modeling equity or justice as children of poor communities watch their colleagues from wealthy communities board planes for Europe on the evening news? What might happen to all of us—society—if we place the same value on Art as we do on Math, Science, or English and insist its inclusion and funding in our public schools? Might it make a difference in local communities? Might it make a difference in school attendance? Could art lead to youth “liking” school more, seeing one another with new eyes, and perhaps creating more friends?

A flute held lightly, clay emerging between young fingers, a little paint on the floor, maybe if these images became a reality in our schools we would find our youth have stronger foundations, our communities are healthier and we all are a little more righteous.

Worse case…maybe another Band and words that make us think. What harm is in that?

"Forever Young"
Forever Young (The Band with Bob Dylan)

May God bless and keep you always
May your wishes all come true
May you always do for others
And let others do for you
May you build a ladder to the stars
And climb on every rung
May you stay forever young
Forever young, forever young
May you stay forever young.

May you grow up to be righteous
May you grow up to be true
May you always know the truth
And see the lights surrounding you
May you always be courageous
Stand upright and be strong
May you stay forever young
Forever young, forever young
May you stay forever young.

May your hands always be busy
May your feet always be swift
May you have a strong foundation
When the winds of changes shift
May your heart always be joyful
And may your song always be sung
May you stay forever young
Forever young, forever young
May you stay forever young.

[1] “ The Page That Counts,” YES! Winter 2007: 16
[2] College Art Association, November 2003, www.collegeart.org/advocacy/c9/

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2007

Clouds settled into one of the canyons this afternoon. They lay low, below the top of the ridge, giving sky to clouds manifesting in the west. As the late afternoon sun drops and moves towards the southwest horizon, its light reflects off cloud vapor giving an otherworldly feel to the sky.

To the south a single Canadian goose honks once and then again, flying eastward. They say that geese mate for life. I don’t know if their right, never looked it up. The sound of a single goose is a lonely one and I wonder; is it honking to find its mate who left the grain field earlier and will soon reunite, or has it lost a mate to the wild or to last seasons hunt?

Yesterday friends were here from the westside of the Cascades. During their visit sixty or so geese rose out of the neighboring cornfield. A group may be made of individuals, but when sixty geese begin talking all at once, the sound is more than a combination of their numbers. Perhaps the sound reflects off the ridge to the south, maybe it’s the low-lying clouds, whatever it is, the sound is one which causes a moments pause. The sound is a song of sorts, changing as the group gains height in slow flight to the west, breaking into two groups, both trying to find formation, but never quite attaining the classic V before we loose sight. A moments pause, then a struggle to find where conversation left off. Struggle because everyone knows what they have experienced has happened a thousand times today and yet this moment is unique, never occurring before and never again.

SUNDAY, JANUARY 28, 2007

The horses came down off Toppenish Ridge yesterday. It’s a little early in the year to find them on this side of the ridge. Might be early snowfalls and long stretches of cold weather has hurt the feed supply and has pushed them over the ridge to the north. Maybe they are simply traveling further because they can and the visit will only last a few days. Whatever the case, the horses normally feed on south side of the ridge, in the Satus drainage.

The Satus is unique. Though not wilderness, it is an unencumbered land. Highway 97 runs much of its length. There is one occupied homestead alongside the highway and a few miles to the south stands a lone transmitting tower at the base of a west sloping. There is sign of old corrals, barns, and homesteads along the highway, but now time owns them. Today horses, elk, deer, coyote, hawks, eagles occupy the valley along with the many small animals seldom noticed from the highway.

Today the Satus is the largest uncontrolled drainage feeding the Yakama River. About 500 square miles of mountains, canyons, and hallows make up the drainage and contribute to the flow of Satus Creek. Satus Creek runs beside the highway for much of its length, and during most of the year the flow of the Satus is slow giving four legged animals easy access to water.

Meandering isn’t a term for most of the length of the Satus. What meandering there is is lost in the spring runoff. The high elevation melt creates a growling rumble through the valley that moves boulders downstream, slides below roots and upends alders, oaks, pines, and sage sending them through beaver dam’s that were years in the building. Eventually the debris lies in magnificent piles of rocks, trees, and brush that lack any semblance of order—indicating something not human made, easily redirecting the creek from its existing bed. By the end of the spring, Satus Creek has new turns and bends, sometimes finding its bed far removed from its fall location. As early summer arrives the creek settles into an easy rock rounding, pebble pushing flow.

Satus Drainage is a series of land formations that guide water to the northeast. The terrain near Satus Pass, at the southwest end of the drainage, is the land that gives first thought to the potential creation of creek. The 3100-foot pass located on Bickleton Ridge holds snow much of the winter. Winter snowmelt allows for the deep watering that maintains higher elevation timber. The melting snow creates rivulets and streams as it slides down the north side of Bickleton Ridge and the headwaters of Satus Creek have birth.

The first fifteen miles of the creek is steep and runs through timber and rock. As the creek drops into valley floor it travels another seven to ten miles a bit slower but with quickness to its step. After thirty miles, Loggy Creek joins the Satus and another five miles downstream Dry Creek jumps in as well. Both Loggy and Dry bring drainage runoff from the west-southwest. With their joining the valley widens and the creeks slope flattens. Another eight miles downstream and Mule Dry Creek links to the Satus and brings water from the south-southeast out of the area known as Horse Heaven Hills. If the Satus is ever a meandering creek, it occurs after the coupling of Mule Dry Creek.

Another eight miles, more or less—depending on the twists and turns of a particular year, the Satus enrolls with the Yakima River. The land levels, the creek slows, and vegetation smaller that a tree begins to gain a foothold along the creek bank. Nearing the Yakima, the soil builds with water and the water table nears the surface. The ground surface becomes wetlands and with little worry of torrent flooding, the vegetation becomes large, tangled, and old. With age, trees now have height to give birth to nesting eagles and hawks. With age, trees have left ages of leaves and branches on the ground giving birth to animals of the soil.

The pace of Status is no longer one of hurry but neither is it slow. Instead, it enters the Yakima River in that space somewhere between teenager and adult, with knowledge, but ready to learn what is around the next bend, and experience the unknown of river life.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 11, 2007

Meeting last night
community gathers
own a HOME, it’s not possible, is it?
My parents
rejected by much of other community
own a HOME, not them.
My birth, is here, in this land
it’s okay, is it, to
own a HOME, in this land?
Mystery engulfs
community laughs
communion last night.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 05, 2007

An overcast morning, a light drizzle moving across the valley, and the temperature is thirty-two degrees. After the last week and a half of snow and below freezing temperatures it seems everyone is enjoying the day. Trees no longer bent over, grasses are free of snow and rebounding, hawks don’t appear as desperate and have moved flight from ten or fifteen feet off the ground to maybe fifty, the neighboring coyote did not have its nose to the ground this morning but seemed to have more of a amble to its gait, and the goats and sheep were warm enough to leave the barn early and stand waiting for the morning feeding of hay.

The morning feeding has a unique side to it. It is not always the same, seldom explainable, and often personal. In some ways, it is solitude, contemplative, and I would say, prayerful. Though, it is never lonely or quiet. Twenty some animals waiting for food are more than willing to let you know you should have arrived sooner and your dreaming to think your time schedule is more important than their stomach’s schedule (they care little that a day ago, in the cold, they would not have left the barn for at least another hour and in the scheme of my world, I am ahead of time). Their scolding quickly dies out to the silence of eating as the hay hits the feeder. They really are not a talking-with-their-mouth-full folk.

In place of the noise is constant movement. It is as if they believe the hay in front of their neighbor must be better than their own. So they constantly nudge and butt their neighbor out of the way and partake of the hay that is only a foot from where they were a moment ago. In the end it is like the game musical chairs put to breakfast, each animal bumps and is bumped down the length of the feeder until finally they have to leave the line and run to the other end and start the process all over. Unlike the game though, all the chairs stay, they all eat, and this morning that seems important.

This mornings feeding has me wondering if we are land based enough. I wonder if Christianity is land based enough. I say this from the perspective of my context. That’s to say, there are many places in the world where the people, and their religion are dependent upon the land. As such, they grasp the land deeply because their subsistence depends on it. But for those who are like me, who live in America, whose food on average travels 1500 miles from field to table, who eat vegetables, fruit, and salmon out of season, who no longer live a life of subsistence, I wonder if we are landed, enough.

At one time most of us lived a life of subsistence. We were people who grew food or hunted or gathered and hoped it was enough to get through the next winter. However, we are no longer a people of subsistence. Other than during the depression, most of America moved away from subsistence living at the turn of the twentieth century. It seems that the more time between us and our experience of subsistence living, the more we forget what it means to live that life. After all, when we are 1500 miles from our food, can we remember what it means to toil the land, care for the land, and experience it as our own? Has our separation from a time of subsistence created a society who butt others over, further down the feeder, and not comprehend that once they are butted off the end, there’s nowhere to go?[1]

This morning in the gray light of feeding, I wondered if a piece of text said something about what it means to be landed. This weeks Lectionary reading for tomorrows Epiphany has a Psalm, which in part says, “For he delivers the needy when they call, the poor and those who have no helper. He has pity on the weak and the needy, and saves the lives of the needy. From oppression and violence he redeems their life; and precious is their blood in his sight.” (Psalm 72: 12-14). The text, in the midst of haying animals, raised the question of subsistence and land for me.

Sheep and goats are natural foragers. They live by grazing and browsing. If humans are not around they keep moving finding only enough food that is sufficient for one’s use. They live by subsistence. On the farm though, this is no longer the case. During the last year people, young and old, volunteered to move irrigation lines, drive tractors, cut and bale hay, load hay on trailers, and load hay into the barn. Hard work, sweaty work, landed work. Yet work which results in the sheep and goats moving away from lives of subsistence. They eat well every morning and evening. The foraging they now do is a bonus in their lives, not a need. The comfort these animals now enjoy occurred because people who live on the other side of subsistence chose to give of their excess time and resources. Becoming landed again, I think, is when we attempt to see the whole, the interrelatedness of all, and the interdependence of everything.

Landed is seeing the whole of the Psalmist’s words. There is often a tendency to hear the “he” (he delivers, He has pity, he redeems) in this text as some otherworldly God—a God whose work is God’s own and not that of the people. Hearing the text in the wholeness of land though, we find ourselves called into deep mutuality where the “he” is not of subsistence—separated from creation, but rather the fullness of God experienced in the she/he/them/us/plant/animal—the we of creation.

[1] Just a few statistics: There are 12.9 million children living in poverty in America today. Roughly 20% of children 6 years-old and younger (4.8 million) live in poverty. Over 10% of the nation’s elderly (3.6 million) now live lives of poverty. Related to hunger…Household who experience hunger or the risk of hunger is 35.1 million, 12.4 million of those are children. (sources: Catholic Campaign for Human Development—www.usccb.org/cchd/povertyusa/index.htm and Bread for the World—www.bread.org)

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2006

The water is down. The days are frozen.

The creek water ran high yesterday; it was cold as well. Creek edges froze. Today ice floats above the creek magically and mysteriously. Some would say it is the grass, the reeds, the willow, that holds the ice in the air. Others might experience the wonder of floating ice in a molecule world of slow moving atoms, electrons, protons, neutrons, and a questioning nucleus.

Water flows beneath the floating ice. Ice mated with long-stemmed grass rising from the creek, dances an unreal courtship as water flows between the stems. Light in reflected relationship can find residence with neither the ice nor the water, but bound between the two as if home is in the space.

Large horizontal ice floes rooted to dry land are stable in the afternoon breeze, while hanging over the flowing creek. It is as if somehow protecting and caring for something hidden in the water, or the grasses.

Movement. Green maybe blue, yes, movement of color below an ice floe across the creek. There, again—flurry, maybe a fluttering, something that is neither ice nor water. Behind grasses who dance outside of ice relationship, free to move as freewill in the mystery of water and ice, interconnected.

A second look and then a third and finally again movement takes form, colors come together, mystery makes itself known. A greenhead, a mallard, a duck, moving-swimming under the ice, in between the grasses and reeds…though, not alone, no, there’s more. Something here’s not right and yet very right. A duckling and a brown female swim with the greenhead male, giving the illusion of family, but this isn’t right, the male always leaves after mating and ducklings don’t hatch this time of year. Just the same, wing to wing, duckling in between, they move between the stems rising from water supporting the frozen structure overhead. Three circle, observe, and then slide by thin willow, not emerging the other side. Impossible…no water movement indicting dive and willow not wide enough to hide.

Was it real? Was it imagined? Does it matter or is there mystery asking for a moment of learning? Ducks holding child close to feather. Folding, enveloping, and protecting from known and unknown. Caring, yet present to the real of life, this lies on the slipping edge of light through ice overhead. A moment, yes, perhaps unreal, but as real as unseen current beneath the creeks surface that calls forth caring for young.

Remindful of journey stories, recent and ancient, told to call memory from deep within, never forgotten, though not always known. Stories of love and care so often not remembered for the love nor the care.

If Creator is intentional to awakening the self of inner-being, perhaps, there is intentionality in the moment, the day, the time of the solstice. Why celebration four days hence and little thought to the long night? Perhaps it is to give memory, to search the deep of community, of life, of family—of future family.

Caught in the story as defined and yet there seems more. Focus of child unborn. Instead, a love story of future parents. Two who struggle for the sake of one another and tomorrow’s life. In the moment, between the reeds, a single light filters through the ice of clear sky, with simple thought of survival. Parental pregnancy not of divinity but of parenthood with focus…focuses of life, love, and care.

Solstice is of moment, of journey, of tomorrow, and shorter night when light is nether ice or sky bound, but of life now cared for by two, who are cared for by two, who are cared for by two—more.

Solstice of life and love. Solstice of community and care. Solstice of us only, for them become us, and us becomes them in the parenting light through the ice floating above the creek when the water is down.

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 16, 2006

What if the Yakama Mission earned a penny every time you searched the Internet?  Well, now we can!

GoodSearch.com is a new search engine that donates ad revenue, about a penny per search, to the charity its users designate.  Use it just like any search engine, and it’s powered by Yahoo!, so you get the same great results. 

Just go to www.goodsearch.com and enter Yakama Christian Mission as the organization you want to support.  Just 500 of us searching four times a day will raise about $7300 in a year without anyone spending a dime!  Please spread the word!

Get started right now and download the GoodSearch toolbar http://www.goodsearch.com/toolbars.aspx

[When you go to www.goodsearch.com type Yakama into the box Who do you GoodSearch for? The Yakama Christian Mission should come up and you’re ready to go. Also, I think you will find loading GoodSearch into your toolbar, very easy. Then you can do all your searching from your toolbar without returning to the site (at the site, though, you can keep track of the money raised by clicking on “Amount Raised” just below the box with the Mission’s name). If you have any question email Dave at dave@yakamamission.org for help]

Hope, Peace, Joy, Love

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 08, 2006

Fog settled into the valley about a week ago along with freezing temperatures. The combination creates an atmosphere where the fog attaches itself to everything. Fence wires, half the size of a crayon, have grown to thumb size stands of ice wandering the country roads. Tumbleweeds across plowed fields now take on the appearance of sculpted ice art intentionally placed on large white snow tabletops. Fog lies up against homes finding any small bump or crevice to attach itself creating thousands of small icy fingers reaching horizontally out from the buildings. It’s as if fogs icy fingers caress buildings, feeling around every door, window, and seam searching for access into the home. Inevitably it does, even in well-built homes. Inside temperatures plummet, heaters run constantly, and blankets become standard setting attire. Not-so-well-built homes are another thing in the icy fog.

Remember the time when you lived in a home where the windows are single pane and drafty and you created your own dual pane window by stapling plastic on the outside wall? Remember when you didn’t have indoor plumbing and used an outside toilet? Remember patching the roof hoping to get through one more winter?

I don’t. Sure, I’ve tried to listen closely to the stories of parents and grandparents, tried to imagine what it was like, but it’s been a long time and the images are hazy. I know the stories are important to remember. I know they are important to ground me to those whose modern reality is the reality of my grandparent’s childhood. I know the stories are important, because I can’t get an image out of my mind—of the woman, just down the road, whom I saw one early morning leaving the “outhouse” in her nightgown walking back to her home through snow with temperatures in the teens. It is important because I was naive enough to be surprised. It is important because the living conditions of that home make it much harder for the woman’s children to learn in school.

Over the last few years, individuals, families, groups and congregations have supported The JustLiving Project, through individual contributions, family Christmas Gifts, and the “Yakama Pouch” (a fundraiser for affordable housing). Today the Mission is on the verge of building its first JustLiving Home (probably as soon as this summer!).

In part, this is a thank you to all who have supported the Yakama Mission in all of its programming to allow time to make TheJustLiving Project a reality. This is also an invitation to you to begin thinking about the JustLiving build(s), and make it one of the justice events in which you, your family, group, non-profit, or congregation participate in the coming year(s). Raising the money was the first half, now volunteering and building the home is the second half!

This journal entry is also to tell you about an upcoming documentary. Beginning December 10, television stations will begin airing “Building on Faith: Making Poverty Housing History.”

The hour-long program, narrated by Linda Ellerbee, award-winning broadcast journalist, is presented by the National Council of Churches USA. It includes interviews with the CEO of Habitat for Humanity International, Jonathan Reckford, former vice-presidential candidates John Edwards and Jack Kemp, and Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) General Minister and President, Sharon Watkins.

Find more information on the documentary at Building on Faith: Making Poverty Housing History . A study guide for the documentary is at www.ncccusa.org/housing/ . And you can find stations carrying the program at www.interfaithbroadcasting.com/onair.aspx .

In the case that the documentary is not shown in your area, you can attain a DVD or VHS of the program on December 20 from,

Mennonite Media
A division of Mennonite Mission Network
1251 Virginia Ave. |Harrisonburg VA 22802
800-999-3534 or 540-434-6701
www.mennomedia.org.

Mission staff is available to join your group to watch and discuss the program and talk about how you can participate in building affordable housing. Call or email us at, (509) 874 -2824 or log@yakamamission.org for more information and/or to set a time to join your group to watch Building on Faith: Making Poverty Housing History.

Join us on the ground floor and getting the word out on The JustLiving Project. Together we will create livable housing where the fog is something to enjoy from the inside of a warm home.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 2006

Wheatgrass grows in this land east of the Cascade Range. Though it’s not a native grass to this land, it is a grass well suited to land conditions with hot summers, cold winters, and a fair amount of rain. A bunch grass of sorts, it has a light leaf structure when first growing that is readily eatable by animals who are grazers and browsers. Stems shoot out from the middle of the grass growing to a height of three to eight feet, depending on the amount of water is has access to. Seeds form at the top of the stems, which are soon blown off in the Fall winds. The seeds become feed for upland birds and of course, reseed and expand the grass base.

Brought into the landscape with the westward movement it has become quite abundant. With a penchant for self-survival, the Wheatgrass has pushed out the native Great Basin Rye Grass. The Great Basin Rye is similar in structure to the Wheatgrass, but its leaf and stem have a lighter structure. Great Basin Rye, anymore, occurs mostly where intentional effort has plowed the Wheatgrass under and the Great Basin Rye planted.

Wheatgrass has been in the countryside so long and has become so abundant—so normal to the landscape; most folk believe it a native grass. When non-native becomes native, it is time to give some thought to what that means for our future.

The phrase Manifest Destiny is similar to Wheatgrass. In the last 160 years, the concept behind Manifest Destiny has become so ingrained into the political, economic, and religious landscape of the United States, the phrase is seldom used outside the history classroom (and because it is taught in history, it is not considered a present concept, but something of the past). Due to its stability within current systemic political, economic, and religious structure, it just isn’t noticed. For example, when George W. Bush said, “You are either with us, or with the terrorists” in the early days after 911, it was hard to grasp the religious undertones of Manifest Destiny informing modern political reality. When Bush’s speechwriter took the Christian text, “Whoever is not against us is for us,” (Mark 9:40) and reworked into “You are either with us, or with the terrorists,” a deep tie between Christianity and politics—the stuff of Manifest Destiny, became very present.

Using Christianity to inform political life and political life to inform Christianity is nothing new. It has been in development since the first Puritan footstep in the new land. And though the Puritan hope for theocracy failed, as the concept “separation of church and state” gained a foothold in the development of documents such as the Constitution, there were many a minister troubled that Christianity would not inform political and economic thought. John M. Mason, a New York minister, not being the least of these,

declared the absence of God in the Constitution ‘an omission which no pretext whatever can palliate’ and warned Americans would ‘have every reason to tremble, lest the Governor of the universe, who will not be treated with indignity by a people more than by individuals, overturn from its foundation the fabric we have been rearing, and crush us to atoms in the wreck.’[1]

John didn’t have to worry.

Less than seventy years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the phrase Manifest Destiny has its beginnings. It is concept that allows political leaders to use Christianity as an endorser of political laws and legislation and give the semblance of “separation of church and state.” In part, this separation occurs because the term/concept came from neither the pulpit nor the bully pulpit, but from a columnist/editor working outside the formal structures of church or state.

In 1845, the Congress is working on the Texas annexation. A fair amount of argument is taking place on Texas’ annexation, as well as that of future states, California and Oregon in particular. In the July-August issue of the United States Magazine and Democratic Review , John O’Sullivan coins the phrase “manifest destiny” in his essay “Annexation.” Here O’Sullivan makes his initial case for the annexation of Texas by saying it is, “…our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.”[2] By September of 1845 he has broadened his argument beyond the boundaries of the growing United States and added a racist spin in the September 15 edition of the New York Herald,

It was the fulfillment of our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions. No longer bounded by the limits of the confederacy, it looks abroad upon the whole earth, and into the mind of the republic daily sinks deeper and deeper the conviction that civilization on the earth—the reform of the governments of the ancient world—the emancipation of the whole race, are dependent, in a great degree, on the United States.[3]

By December 27, O’Sullivan writes a line in the New York Morning News, which will have the greatest influence on the expanding country. When writing about the Oregon boundary clash with Great Britain he speaks in favor of the United States saying,

And that claim is by the right of our manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and federated self-government entrusted to us.[4]

The religious tie to government in O’Sullivan’s articles is apparent by remembering “ Providence” is a common term of the day for “God” or “God’s influence,” thus the capitalization in each quote. John O’Sullivan soon leaves the public limelight, but the phrase and concept of Manifest Destiny stays to influence both the thinking and actions of the people of the United States from that time on.

As National American Indian Heritage Month comes to a close it does well to remember the concept of Manifest Destiny led the United States into events such as the Sand Creek Massacre on November 29, 1864, the 1870 Congress approval of $100,000 for Indian education and thereby support of Christian Boarding Schools and the removal of thousands of 6–16 year-old children from their parents, the General Allotment Act of 1887 that led to the acquisition of Indian lands by non-Indians, and multiple other laws and legislation to this current day. It also does well to remember Manifest Destiny was/is about more than to “overspread and to possess the whole of the continent,” but to have America look “ abroad upon the whole earth.”

[1] Susan Jacoby, “Original Intent,” Mother Jones Dec. 2005: 30
[2] http://web.grinnell.edu/courses/HIS/f01/HIS202-01/Documents/OSullivan.html
[3] John O'Sullivan, "Annexation," United States Magazine and Democratic Review 17, no.1 (July-August 1845): 5-10
[4] America’s Byways: http://www.rmpbs.org/byways/sft_manifest.html
[5] Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_O'Sullivan_(journalist)

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 2006

Trenches were backfilled today. For the last couple of weeks, Jill, David, Angel, Uriel, and Dave have worked on placing the waterline and electrical conduit for the neighbors (Belinda is forever working the books trying to make these jobs possible). The work began with marking the location of the trenches. A few days later, the backhoe arrived and the digging of the trenches began.

As the bucket moved through the land, a trench began to form. The soil in each bucket lifted from the ground found placement to the south of the developing trench. As the land moved from its place of ancient rest, it became apparent the land is different from expected. On the surface of the land were apple trees. Golden Delicious trees planted almost thirty years ago, whose bark tells of productive years. Trees having spent years of dropping leaves created a top soil. First appearances tell of trees planted in age-old topsoil. But, appearances can be deceiving. Instead of deep topsoil, the soils from the trench told a different story.

Bucket after bucket brought up gravel, sand, and cobbles. Rock, smooth and round, formed from ages of being washed over by water came to the surface. The story of the ground buried below the surface of the land told of a time when the Yakima River flowed through this land. An ancient story came alive as the buckets brought riverbed to the surface, telling of days when water flowed and lingered in eddies and of raging torrents when warm rains melted the eastern Cascade snow pack. Years, perhaps thousands, saw the laying of these rocks and sand and cobbles as the river flowed through this landscape. Creative layers of riverbed compacted by time were now lifted from rest by the teeth of a steel bucket, human made.

After digging the trenches, shoveled sand covers exposed cobbles at the bottom of the trench, leaving a fine smooth surface. Water pipe and conduit is then glued and set into the trench, all the while trying to keep rock from falling in. Rocks seem to have a mind of their own, though, and no matter how careful everyone is, they find their way into the trench and along side the pipe, which leaves someone with the job of walking the line and pulling out the stray stones. The shoveling of additional sand beds the pipe, keeping it safe from rock. A locator wire goes on top of the sand, so future diggers of soil may find the pipe, but not tear it out. Last, the trench is backfilled with the native soil removed earlier.

Backfilling is always a reminder to the human shoveler of soil conditions never regained. No matter how hard one tries, all of the soil removed never gets back into the space from which removed. The original creative layering of soil with its years of natural compaction—flowing water, animal hooves, rain, and snow—are impossible to recreate.

As the soil reenters the ground, it may be wheel rolled by a tractor, or it may be “jetted” by flooding water into the backfill, but regardless of the means of re-compaction, there is always a windrow of soil on top, indicating where the ground is disturbed. Once dug from its ancient rest, the soil is never the same.

The sun has set and in the darkening dusk, the tractor is loaded onto the trailer. Shovels and picks, leftover pipe and glue find their way back into the pickup bed. People of the dig say their goodbyes to one another. Cars start and occupants begin thinking of warm homes waiting. As the vehicles pull off the site, one questions, are we of the soil? And if so, will we be the same again?

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2006

Two days, two journal entries, what’s this all about! Well, let’s not make this too long and just get to the point. The evening news did a story about a Christian church that is going to do a food giveaway for Thanksgiving. Cool, right? Type of thing we can all get behind, right? Hmm.

Seems this church is going to give food away, but there is one caveat. They are only going to give food to those people who can prove they are citizens of the United States. They feel that by giving food in this manner they can help some of those who are hungry, at the same time stay legal, and not act in a manner that will send some of their folk to jail. Really!? Yep, really.

Okay, here’s the deal from one mission’s perspective.

This is nuts, on far too many levels, but lets keep it brief. First, the House of Representatives immigration Bill H.R. 4437 is not the law. NO ONE is going to jail for knowingly aiding or assisting (in other words, feeding) an undocumented immigrant who is hungry.

Second, even if H.R. 4437 were the law and the government interpreted the feeding of hungry people as illegal. Then it is appropriate to spend some time in jail. One would have to question any society who is willing to allow people to go hungry because they did not carry the correct citizenship. It is unconscionable to skew the Christian religion in such a way that people would allow the hungry to go without food, because the state said it is the law.

Just last week the journal paraphrased Howard Thurman. Here are his direct words from his book Jesus and the Disinherited when speaking about societal and religious acceptance of segregation.

Most of the accepted social behavior-patterns assume segregation to be normal—if normal, then correct; if correct, then moral; if moral, then religious. Religion is thus made a defender and guarantor of the presumptions.

Thurman implores each and every one of us to question what we believe is normal and right from the perspective of our religion. His words push us to remember theology is always on the side of the poor, the oppressed, and the hungry. And he reminds us, that when we fail to question societal norms and our faith in light of those norms, we can find ourselves practicing evil as opposed to love.

So, go into this next week feeding the poor and hungry. Should laws ever come into being that say you should not feed the hungry—ignore them in your feeding, struggle to overturn them in your love for those who hurt. And when they come to arrest you for your caring of the least of these, remember two quotes.

“New ways of disclosing the world have always aroused the resistance of those who wanted to stay securely with the familiar.” —Paul Tillich
And
“Go out on a limb. Become the NUT you were born to be.” —Yakama Christian Mission

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2006

Europeans entered the new land believing the experience, education, and facts they carried were at a par beyond other peoples. Embedded in this knowledge, though impossible to tell how deeply, were also their religious convictions. This combination left little room to hear the voices of other people whom they might contact. Yet neither knowledge nor religion alone got folks on a boat to head across the ocean.

The first push of immigrants to the new land came out of England in the early 1600’s. These folk came because they believed a better life, society, and practice of religion would occur if they could put some distance between themselves and the King of England.

Prior to 1600, England forced the Stuart family of Scotland to become Calvinist Presbyterians. This act didn’t sit well with the Stuart’s. So when Elizabeth I died in 1603 and King James VI (Stuart) of Scotland succeeded his English cousin to rule England, it is fair to say the English Puritans were not treated as kindly as they would like. In short order, those Puritans at the more extreme end of the Church of England, gathered up their goods, and headed off to the new land where they believed they could live as they believed correct.

Even a good journey across the Atlantic in the early 1600’s, has its moments when one may wonder if they are ever going to make it to the other side of the desert of water. As such, it’s not a far stretch to understand that the English Puritans quickly found themselves making ties between their 1620 journey and the Hebrew scripture. Europe quickly became the oppressive old land, and Puritans correlated their relationship with England with that of the Israelites and Egypt. The risk of crossing the Atlantic had the overtones of crossing a desert. And stepping off the boat and onto a land of which they had only heard stories about, but never seen, gave the undertone of crossing the Jordan River, that they were the chosen people, and that God had ordained this new land as the new Isreal and theirs to claim, inhabit, and subdue. One can hear the Puritan mindset in the words of John Rolfe when speaking about the Virginia settlers,

For these settlers “boldly proclaimed themselves…‘a peculiar people, marked and chosen by the finger of God, to possess it, for undoubtedly he is with us.’ ”[1]

Unlike today’s popular thinking, the Puritans were not a people who endorsed the concept “freedom of religion.” Rather they came with the thinking of the old country deeply embedded in their worldview. Rather than bringing a mindset where freedom of religion meant freedom to practice all religion(s), the Puritan’s concept was to have the freedom to practice their religion and all people, new and old to this land, should practice it as well. Theirs was not a notion of being an open people; accepting multiple ways of understanding and practicing a belief in God, but rather creating church and government where all practiced a very particular understanding of God.

Just as the modern concept, “freedom of religion,” had little to do with the Puritans, the Puritan mindset could not have comprehended the concept, “separation of church and state.” The Puritans never imagined nor would they have endorsed something like the First Amendment, Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…, rather these were a people who would have stood in opposition of separating church and state. A better fit to the Puritan imagination was the creation of a theocracy where they could embed their understanding of God deeply into the structure of the state. Hubert Locke speaks about the “great experiment”[2] of the Puritans, understanding these were a people whose mindset was set on building a new society that has an intimate tie between God and country and where the laws and legislation of the land would reflect God’s purpose. Their creation of theocracy came to some reality in the ten years after the 1620 ocean voyage. In 1630 John Winthrop, the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, spoke of the colony as “‘a city upon a hill,’ a model Christian state that all the world could imitate.” Christianity, though a very particular understanding of that faith, had made its toehold in the new Isreal.

Though the great experiment into theocracy failed, the Puritan’s had embedded the concepts of the land being the new Isreal, God looking favorably on new arrivals, and Christianity as a core influence for political decision making into the developing national psyche. By the time early national structure is developed, “Americans [are] readily accept[ing] covenant talk about being blessed by God…[and thinking of themselves as] chosen by God to play a leading role in…[the] world’s redemption.”[3] This accepted knowledge was to lead to the development of a new idea, a new phrase, which would have devastating consequences in the lives of the lands existing peoples.

[1] George M. Marsden, Religion and American Culture (Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1990), 15.
[2] Personal notes from the Turner Lectures, October 9-11, 2006.
[3] Marsden 17.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2006

It is National American Indian Heritage Month again and a time, I think, to review relationship between the peoples of the Americas. Review, particularly of the relationship between Native Americans and the dominate culture, seems appropriate considering the historical education most of us received regarding these two cultures. For many, whose culture is not Native American, knowledge of Native history since European arrival of is minimal.

Non-native peoples receive their Native American education from different sources, but two are primary. For some, understanding is almost exclusively movie and video based. Which too often means non-native perceptions of Native America is based in the 1990 movie Dances With Wolves. A problem that arises is people leave the movie believing they have experienced a Native America story, when instead they have had their cultural bias that the white man is hero enforced—one more time. For others, education on Native American history is acquired through high school textbooks. The problem with textbooks is they seldom devote a full chapter to the history of the lands indigenous people. This reality is not necessarily surprising considering textbook writing occurs within a capitalistic system, whose focus is the selling of textbooks to the greatest number of school districts, which means textbook writing will seldom address the messy side of history.

Certainly many teachers have tried to circumvent this system of watering down history. And some eras have been better than others to allow the circumvention to occur. During the 1970’s and the height of the Red Power movement, events—such as the occupation of Alcatraz by the Indians of All Tribes—became news stories allowing instructors to use current historical events to inform students of past history. In today’s context, though, this is seldom the case. With the burden of government imposed testing standards, instructors find themselves with less freedom to move outside systemic structures that define what is normal for all communities. Howard Thurman notes that which society allows as normal can create devastating structure. He reminds us when speaking about segregation, “that which is accepted—becomes normal, that which is normal—becomes moral, and that which is moral—becomes religious” (paraphrased)[1]. To sort out where the perceived normal has become religious and accepted, history and the communities current mindset needs reconsideration.

There is no one perfect place to begin looking at the past. Today, though, is the first anniversary of the death of an activist, advocate, and mystic who changed how many understood Native America. Like Howard Thurman, Vine Deloria Jr. was one of the leading theologians of the last 100 years (TIME magazine called Deloria one of the 10 most influential theologians of the 20 th century.) His landmark book Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto published in 1969 challenged common perceptions and pushed white audiences to reconsider their mindsets and global norms. A thought from this book seems as good as any place to begin.

“The western hemisphere produced wisdom, western Europe produced knowledge,”[2] writes Deloria in Custer Died for Your Sins. An idea worth thinking about… As Christianity lost its outside status and became the religion of the ruling class and dependent upon that class, the ancient wisdom tradition became problematic. Problematic because wisdom does not affirm hierarchal systems, but instead is a flowing, organic, ever changing awareness of oneness. Wisdom refuses relegation to a moment in time. Therefore, when Christianity began to have its identity in the state-ruling class, it allotted the deep integration of nature, faith, simplicity and mystery to paganism, in favor of science, law, abstract, the Magna Charta, and (in America) the Constitution. One needs to go no further than their backyard to experience this truth today. Take for instance, how the Christian church, whether it be congregations, conferences, regions, or seminaries, continues to struggle, sometimes even finding it impossible, for decision making to arise out of organic based structures, such as that of consensus. Consensus calls for movement towards agreement to arise from the heart, in favor of all, inviting voice not only of those folk present, but from the absent, the land, the water, the plants and the animals as well. Instead of using a process of decision-making based in the wisdom tradition, Christian structures often take the easier route of using a process of decision-making based in the factual-knowledge tradition that holds Robert’s Rules of Order as the acceptable.

In the thirty-seven years since Deloria penned those aforementioned words, folks within Christianity have worked to reclaim the richness of the ancient wisdom tradition. It has been a struggle though, getting out of the headiness of knowledge and back to wisdom that finds its character in the heart, nature, and the mystery of the unknown. For that very reason, because it is so hard in a modern context to accept a mystery impossible to define through knowledge, that it is important to acknowledge it was with knowledge that western Europe and the church entered the new land.

[1] Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996).
[2] Vine Deloria, Jr., Custer Died For Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988), 11.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2006

Since we moved from an update format to a journaling format a few years ago, we have enjoyed a wonderful tie with readers—you! The format has allowed readers the freedom to respond, make comments, jokes, and part with great insight. All of which has lead to conversations and deeper relationship with friends of the Mission.

Two months of the year have garnered the greatest need for discussion. Journal entries during the month of May focus on the issues affecting the lives and culture of farmworkers and low-income immigrants from south of the American border. November, being National American Indian Heritage Month, has journal entries placing a greater emphasis on Native-Americans. May and November, times of year with much response. At least, that was the case.

Then the last journal entry came along. An algebra problem…who knew an entry requesting math help would bring more people into relationship than any other? Responses giving the answer to the problem, solved in many ways, came pouring in! It has been a wonderful week and half reading your responses and your stories about math, childhood, college, and life. Really, it’s been pretty cool! Cool enough, that we are thinking about making this a monthly event. Students bring problems we often have to wrestle with (staff’s collective memories on subjects like chemistry and algebra makes it seem, to us, as if Jacobs wrestling event was easy!) and it looks like life might be much easier to pass some of these problems on to you!

Well, we will think about it. If you have any thoughts, let us know!

In the meantime, like we promised, what many of you have been waiting for, the winner of the first Yakama Mission Puzzler!

On the twentieth of October, in the year of our Lord two thousand and six, at nine fifty-seven in the morning (sounds a little like announcing a birth doesn’t it?), Nancy Johnson wrote,

x + y = 5,000
x = 5,000-y

.03x + .05y = 210
.03(5,000 - y) + .05y = 210
(150 - .03y) + .05y = 210
150 +.02y = 210
.02y = 60

y = 3,000
x = 2,000.

Our winner!!!

Runner-ups whose answers came within the next hour, with various approaches and unique considerations were, Will Sheppy at 10:01, Martha Herrin at 10:02, Dan Paul at 10:12, Al Terry at 10:46, and Katherine Raley at 10:47.

Oh, and by the way, the student came up with the answer shortly after leaving us that afternoon. Sometime maybe we get in the way of the answer?!

Thanks to everyone!

The next journal entry will get us on track with National American Indian Heritage Month. We look forward to your comments and thoughts as we explore and re-explore issues of the American Indian and Alaska Native peoples, who against the odds, have embedded social thought, ethics, culture, and politic into the American fiber.

October 20 , 2006
[Jim has $5000 to invest. He invests a portion at 3% interest. The remainder of the $5000 he invests at 5% interest. After one year, the interest is $210. How much of the $5000 did Jim invest at 3% and how much at 5%?]

We have an agreement with everyone who works and/or volunteers at the Mission and attends school. That is, we get to ask if there is any homework for the day. If there is, then we go over it with them and try to help with areas where they might be having problems. The problem that arises, from time to time…well, okay, sometimes more often than we would like to admit, is that we can’t figure it out either.

Such is the case with the algebra problem above.

We worked a few problems and all went well, then we got to this one. Kind of embarrassing having three of us, all who have passed algebra, sitting around for an hour and not coming up with an answer.

And then we really got to thinking! We put our minds together, pulled together all of our synaptic resources, and then came up with the answer! We have you! Someone on the other end of this mailing, in all the multiple lists this journal goes out to, must be the algebra wizard!

NOW it is up to you! Don’t think it is someone else. It must be you! Work out the problem and send it back to us. We need it no later than Monday. But sooner is better than later!

Think of it like this. The one who gets the answer first gets to go up against puzzle master Will Shortz on National Public Radio’s “Weekend Edition Sunday.” You don’t get to, but it’ll be fun thinking of it this way!

We will make you a deal though. If you get the right answer, you get to have the knowledge that made a difference in a student’s life. AND we will announce the winner in the next Journal Entry! AND we will email you our very first document that you have won the Yakama Mission Puzzler!

Yes, it is a great responsibility. For only you can prevent us from being embarrassed any deeper. As students smile as this entry goes out, many wonder if we have connections with people who can do this. We have assured them our contacts go deep! Help us be truth tellers!

Here is our clue or at least the equation we have developed so far (of course, it is probably wrong, after all, we have not come up with the answer!).

x = amount invested @ 3%
y = amount invested @ 5%

x + y = $5000
.03x + .05y = $210

1.03x + 1.05y = $5210

Okay, it’s in your ballpark (or email box) now! Where did we go wrong? We look forward to those entries flowing in over the next few days! Hurry, the student’s laughter is starting to get to us!

October 13 , 2006
Morning. Sunrise.

You know how the sun rises just above the horizon. The colors of sunrise are gone. The bright light gives a sort of yellow hue to everything while powering across the land at an incredibly low angle. And the shadows stretch as if they are reaching for the evening horizon.

That is this morning.

The last two nights have been cold. The garden reflects the freezing. The tomato and squash plants who stretched their leaves and flowers towards the sun all summer, now lie wilted, stems turned down with leaves blanketing the ground as if a shroud, bright summer greens slowly giving way to the fall color of the russet ground.

Three weeks ago, seven computers, monitors, projector, and other stuff got up and walked off…with a little help. The help, pushed on an office window until the windows flanges gave way—access acquired. The window, open door, and footprints across the field tell a brief story about a moment in someone(s) life.

Feelings of violation embed themselves deep as returning staff pushes the unlocked door open. Feelings lie at a low angle as if hidden, but are not. Feelings push, as if light shadows moving towards the horizon, until they find the surface, again and again. Three weeks ago, today, the immediacy of feelings calls to question the linear concept of time.

Carrying computers and monitor a quarter mile across the field was not easy. Three weeks, how are the arms and calves today? Do they remember their journey that night? What was their story, what journeys had they taken before the journey cloaked in the full darkness of the new moon?

Questions surface. Who is the victim? The Mission? The Staff? Or is it the one who took the dark journey three weeks ago? What was—is the life they are living? What were their choices leading up to the choice of that evening? How had life lived affect their choice that night of the new moon? Had they been beaten, abused, left hungry as a child? Were their parents present, loving, caring throughout their childhood? If they were hurt, did society pay attention to their hurt? Did we?

Are ideals enforced or lost in times like these? Who really knows? The brightness of ideal may need some un-linear time under the shroud, close to the ground where life is rich in the midst of decomposition. There, perhaps, the memories of sunrise meld with feelings of loss, giving the nutrition of renewal and new beginnings and re-birth to understanding the ideal realm that is and not yet.

Ancient souls remember a thousand sunrises. Today is our time to live with the stretching shadows and the memories of summer leaves stretching towards the sun. Today is our time to live the faith of our ancestors—of sunrises and resurrection.

September 22 , 2006
Reconciliation is more than a word, more than a program, more than a theme, more than a commission, and much more than a name. Reconciliation is an action lying within that when released brings forth the unimaginable power of love and compassion creating deep relationship.

Finding Our Memories: The Path to Reconciliation

By David Bell

Third quarter of the State game and the action is fast. The White Swan Cougars are moving the ball, but the Toledo Indians have orchestrated a comeback and are now a few points behind. Everyone is down in the Toledo court, the ball is passed from one player to the next, finally the ball is moved into the key and out of the melee the ball rises into the air, hits the backboard, drops and rolls halfway around the rim, then rolls to the outside and down into a mass of arms trying to gain control.

"Who's got it? Who has the ball?" yells someone a few seats down in the bleachers.

Next to Jill is a Hank from White Swan. He yells back, "the Indians got the ball!"

The White Swan supporters residing in the bleachers roar out in laughter and yells of support for the team, causing just a hint of pause on the court (sounds like more action "up there" than down here where the game is!)

This level and this type of laughter are unattainable by a late night white television comedian. Maybe the laughter would rise up in a set by George Lopez or Cheech Marin in front of a Chicano/a or Latino audience. But for Hank, from White Swan, an average Indian living life, it was a natural. He voiced the thinking of everyone in the bleachers, at just the right time. Here it is, 2006 and a team of non-Indians and their supporters-teachers, parents, school board members, students-have yet to understand the comedic idiocy of calling themselves Indians.

Perhaps 2006 is the year we begin to question why we sit in the non-Indian bleachers and not hear the laughter on the other side of the court. How did we get here? How long have we been here? Can we move? The questions are neither easy nor easily answered. A starting place, though, may be located in our forgetfulness or maybe…our selective remembrance. Those stories passed down to us and those we pass on to future generations are most often located in our accomplishments and seldom in our hurt. A history of not acknowledging our hurt has developed eyes with cataracts. We see inequity but struggle to perceive the multiple building blocks-history, laws, morals, stories-holding it in place. Finding our memory is crucial to answering the questions. Finding our memory is crucial to hearing the laughter across the court from us.

For the last eighty-four years the Yakama Christian Mission has focused on working with youth. Eighty-four years of developing programs which help youth become young adults who make a difference in the world. Like any other entity we have had our days of doing this well and days of doing it not so well. The legacy, though, passed down to the current generation of Mission staff, is to ask the questions and search for the places where we have done the work "not so well.” This type of reflection, searching for memory-all memory, is not always easy, for hearing the "not so well" doesn't always feel so good. Yet this is the voice the Mission has found invaluable for it gives the truth of history, fullness and life forgotten. This truth can only lead to programming for youth that has more meaning for community and greater life for youth.

Thanks to Reconciliation, Mission staff has developed better ears to hear those speaking the "not so well.” Being comfortable in the hearing has allowed transformation to begin and groundwork for young adult leadership to be tilled. Due to Reconciliation the Mission has begun laying a footing where acknowledging truth leads us into program development that might live into a realm where all have voice and equity is the norm.

Reconciliation has tried and continues to strive to help all of us to remember and find our memory anew. Bringing the church into awareness that we are those teachers, parents, board members, and students who are good folk, but folk who too often have forgotten our roots that came from hurt. Reconciliation calls us to remember our roots and become a people who are less likely to sit in the bleachers calling ourselves Indians, Chiefs, Warriors, Braves without experiencing the damage these words inflict on others. When Reconciliation is allowed into our lives, change occurs first within ourselves and then to the structure surrounding us. This is never easy, but when we begin to change the world, then we finally become reconciled to the forgotten of our world. Then perhaps we all laugh together.

September 16 , 2006
It’s one of those not quite the end of summer, not quite the beginning of fall mornings. Toppenish ridge is sharp against the dawn sky. The last cutting of hay came off the pasture a few days ago and the sound of sprinklers coming across the pasture give sound to the moving colors of sky and ridge. As the landscape lightens, the sheep begin to eat dewed grass, while the goats huddle together and continue sleeping in their family groups. The horses across the fence line feed with heads down, tails moving slightly, while their colts and fillies eat near, but not too near—now being six-months-old and imagining independence.

Rebecca and David planted five acres into pasture yesterday. Being the last of the summer students who have another nine days before college begins; they are invaluable in tying together loose ends left from the summer frenzy. David and Rebecca were not by themselves getting the seed into the ground though. A neighbor loaned the drill (planter) to lay down the seed. Being a new drill though, the hydraulic couplings on the tractor did not match the fittings on the drill. This led to David making a phone call and an hour and a half later, with couplings given by another neighbor, the drill was ready to seed. The day was long and dusty, but thanks to the help of all, today will see another irrigation line (also on loan from another neighbor) watering the newly planted seed.

In just a while, the goats will be up eating alongside the sheep. Eating grass planted in a similar process to yesterdays. The last twentyfour hours are a reminder of the interconnectedness of life. This time speaks against the concept that folk are first individuals and what they do—what they accomplished is theirs individual to own. Instead, when creation comes together life is lived deeply. People work together, the land is treated as the life giver it is, plants are nurtured, goats and sheep eat side by side, and together all enjoy the first light as sun rises above the ridge.

September 06 , 2006
Pluto has dwarf status!? Really! They can’t take the dog, with those long ears, skinny tail, smile that says nothing is ever wrong, and make him smaller. Will they change that unique voice of his change as well? The framework of my world was beginning to fall apart…the dog of my childhood was beginning to change before my eyes! All of those years of watching Pluto in Disney cartoons were coming to a screeching halt! How could they do this! What am I to do!?

They’re talking about the planet Pluto? Oh. Never mind.

Wow, there is a lot energy around Pluto’s new status as a dwarf planet. Not really surprising I guess. Some of us began our first days of life staring up out of the crib at planets circling around our heads. There at the far reaches of the crib mobile was that little bitty planet, Pluto.

Pluto has been the favorite planet of many people. The smallest planet of the system, far away from the other planets, at the very edge of the known universe (at least that is what it felt like as a child), and with our penchant for the underdog, Pluto had that special little planet place in our hearts.

Now? Pluto is an also ran. Great aspirations, but planet status is never to be Pluto’s again. At least they kept the word planet as part of Pluto’s description!

What has me thinking is how little time it will take for this to no longer matter. A generation, two at the most, and no one will remember the order the planets were when I grew up—except for maybe a few historical astronomers.

School just started last week. And beginning this year, when the classes get to the section on planets, Pluto is gone. From now on, students will begin learning of a solar system shy of the far outlying planet I have become accustom too. Those children entering kindergarten today will be educated and grow into adulthood knowing of the dwarf planet Pluto, but never of planet Pluto. Before you know it, it will be as if planet Pluto never existed.

Never existed…

Our educational system has been used before to create new worldviews and attempt to eliminate existence. While folks are creating “Save Pluto” T-shirts and campaigning for the reinstatement of Pluto as a planet, it seems like a good time to revisit and remember one of those times when folks used the educational system to erase memory.

It was in 1870 when congress authorized $100,000 for Indian education. Wars with Indian nations were slowly coming to an end.1. American politicians, business, and citizens who favored the manifest destiny concept had begun to find treaties made with Indian nations problematic to the wellbeing of the United States. Many treaties resulted in the creation of reservations and rancherias throughout the United States. Which meant the United States literally created sovereign nations within its borders. In light of the manifest destiny concept that God ordained all land to the Euro-American people of the United States, this was a problem. The question became how to solve this mistake, place all land into ownership of the United States, create American citizens of the reservation people, and have them think and act like Euro-Americans . How better to do this than through education?

The $100,000 for Indian education may have not been much, but it was enough to begin the boarding school system. The development of the boarding school system was the creation of an intentional system of removing the culture and heritage of a people and in turn instilling the mindset of the dominate culture. In today’s context, it is hard to imagine the United States developed a system to literally take children from parents and send them to boarding schools where they would be forced to have their hair cut, speak a different language (this is not about being bilingual, but of only speaking English), change their name, and wear uniforms from the ages of six to sixteen. Any one of us can only imagine what it would be like to be forcefully separated from our parents when we were six-years-old, or to have our child take from us. The Tunisian psychologist Albert Memmi helps us understand why the U.S. government found this line of action necessary.

In order for the colonizer to be a complete master, it is not enough for him to be so in actual fact, but he must believe in its [colonialism’s] legitimacy. In order for that legitimacy to be complete, it is not enough for the colonized to be a slave, he must accept his role. 2.

The act of having a people forget their religion, art, dress, food—accept colonization—does not occur overnight. Removing culture takes time. Knowing this is the case and realizing public policy seldom stays on track for more than a few years, the U.S. government needed to find a process by which this educational program could become generational. The trick was to find an organization, outside the government, whose mindset was already generational and even better, an organization that already had a policy of educating over generations. The government found how to fill this need in the Christian church. In 1869 President Grant gave church and missionary societies who ran and supervised educational systems on reservations the authority, “to act in behalf of the government, appoint…Indian agents and hir[e]…personnel employed on the reservations.” 3. This mandate fit the call of many Christian churches already focused on education and conversion (Rather gives you a new appreciation for the concept of Faith Based Initiative doesn’t it?).

This of course was just the beginning. Generational education means re-education lasts for generations. Though it looked different and went through different manifestations through time, the intentional re-education of Indian people continued in the United States until 1972.

The wounds and injury inflicted by the U.S. government through its generational re-education program, still throbs today. However, the government failed in creating a landscape where the culture of indigenous people seemed to never exist.

Maybe that is what makes memory so important. Perhaps that is what makes our stories so important. For the stories each of us bring to the table inform and tell us who we are in a land full of people of multiple histories.

Native-American culture exists today because of memory and story. Like much of the story we find in the Hebrew text, this is a memory that does not discriminate between stories that place a people in a good light or a bad light, because this is a memory that tells the importance of life in all its vicissitudes.

Pluto and the re-education of Indians in this land may seem galaxies apart. However, they are the stories that tell us who we are and who we have been. It is just as important to tell our children and grandchildren that when we grew up, we had no doubt that Pluto was a plant, and then one day, out of the blue what we knew as fact, was no longer; as it is to tell our children the stories of how our country attempted to eliminate the culture of Native-Americans.

Of course, we can let all of that go and live in a land of cartoons with a long eared dog who has a skinny tail, and a smile that says nothing is ever wrong.

1. I use the term Indian in this journal entry. Know its use is intentional and open for discussion as to why I use it along with the term Native-American. If the term Indian seems problematic to you, please email and we can dialogue more.
2. Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized (Boston: Beacon Press, 1965), 89.
3. Jorge Noriega, “American Indian education in the United State: Indoctrination for the Subordination to Colonialism,” in The State of Native America: Genocide, Colonization, and Resistance, M. Annette Jaimes ed., (Boston: South End Press, 1992), 380.

August 26 , 2006
Olga’s the matriarch. She’s the matriarch, but no longer a young, spry goat with great hair and a good figure. No, these days her hair is a little thinner, her figure looks like she is carrying a watermelon in her belly—sideways, and spryness has long left the legs so when the goats now head out to the pasture she is at the end of the line. Olga’s standing though has little to do with her looks or her strength. Olga is the matriarch because she is a leader.

One goal of the Mission’s summer work is about helping leaders develop. From the local youth and young adults to those who arrive each week for Learning and Serving trips, the work is about helping folks to imagine themselves as leaders. To move towards that goal we use Olga as an example of what it means to be a leader.

It has been years now since I first learned of Olga’s leadership abilities. We had been to town to pick up supplies from a local church. When we returned to the Mission, Katherine walked over to check on the animals while the rest of us began to unload the car. In the middle of the shuttling supplies to the office, Katherine ran back, a little out of breath, saying we needed to come to the goat pen right away.

It wasn’t a pretty site. The goats were huddled in one corner of the pen. Kitty-corner from the group, out in front of them all, lay Olga. She was down on the ground, barely breathing, ears torn and shredded, face bloodied. It didn’t take long to figure out what had happened. Dogs had gotten into the pen and attacked the goats. Olga, being the matriarch—the leader, had placed herself in front of the other goats and took on the dogs and the brunt of the attack. She had done quite a job. While a few were hurt as well, they were able bodied and would recover. The same could not be said about Olga. It was questionable if she would make it to the end of the day.

Leadership is often tied to power. People look at a president or a CEO of a company and believe they can lead because of the power given to them as they took the position. Presidents and CEO’s of large companies too often grasp power and use it to impose policy change, create laws, and force a new path. Yet when change occurs strictly out of power, wars occur, companies take advantage of others, and people are hurt. Power and leadership are quite different from one another.

Power stands by itself. It has no need of others. Leadership, on the other hand, is located in relationship. Leadership has aspects of power, but it comes from the whole community. This is why leadership is risky and calls for risk. Leaders must place themselves out in front of others, voice whom they are (voice may come out of silence at times as well as verbal), call for the wellbeing of all, and then wait to see if anyone believes their voice. Unlike power, leadership developed in relationship means they cannot impose themselves on others. They can only be transparent and risk their lives by opening themselves to scrutiny of others. Leadership is seldom easy.

Less than a week after the last Learning and Serving trip of the summer, we received a phone call from a summer intern/leader. She was more than a little upset. As her story unfolded, we found that she had spent a few days with family and friends. During their time together discussion got around to Mexicans. After a summer living in community with people who work twelve hours a day, at minimum wage, without healthcare or a pension, so they can just sustain family, while others eat low cost food, she believed others could hear injustice in today’s immigrant society. Instead her comments were returned with the rhetoric of power, “their just here to take advantage of us, they are really criminals so what happens to them is their own fault, they could go home if they wanted, they have caused their own hurt”

She found what it is like to be an Olga. She found what it is to be a leader. Being out front is not about power, nor about being seen, but of placing ones thoughts and core being in favor of the powerless. She found that her faith, in this case Christianity, calls for walking against much of the world’s perspective in preference for the poor, the outcast, and the weak. She found that leadership is not about being physically strong, but about being in mutual relationship with the hurt.

Olga and the intern have both recovered. Olga is no longer out in front of the pack. Yet she maintains her heard status as matriarch. Goat respect, you might say, for her years of leadership and risk taking. The intern has found she has left the heard of domination and joined the smaller heard who gives preference to the oppressed. Olga and Intern, both have had their ears chewed on, both have risked themselves, and both have the respect of their heard.

August 14 , 2006
Northwest Public Radio aired the piece below today. You can find the audio at http://nwpr.org/HomepageArticles/Article.aspx?n=2103, where you can listen and/or download.

Our deep thanks go to Carol Cizauskas who found it important to spend a full day with Belinda and the youth and children of the Summer Fun Program to develop three and a half minutes of programming! We hope you enjoy the content and find it valuable in your discussions at the office, the coffee shop, and even church this next week.

Peace.

Posted: Monday, August 14, 2006

WHITE, SWAN, WA - Public schools are for education. For low-income families, they’re also a source of child care and meals. But what happens in the summer, when children in poverty might be left alone while their parents work? Correspondent Carol Cizauskas visited White Swan in south-central Washington to look at a program that bridges the summertime gap.

[Sound: van]

Belinda Bell goes out every morning for an hour or two to pick up kids in a van.

Bell : Hey there. Hey, Elvis, how are you this morning?
Helper: Carlos, I need your permission slip.
Bell: Yeah, we need all your permission slips.
Child: I lost mine, so I told my mom to write it on a paper.
Bell: Okay.

Bell runs a summer program for five dozen children from the community of White Swan. The social worker started the project at the Yakama Christian Mission eight years ago.

[Sound: children]

It started as something different.

Bell: Initially it was just, go pick up a few kids, have them here for a few hours, not really even plan on feeding them, but then realizing that these kids were coming hungry. And so we go, oh, no, we gotta do something. So we were getting everything out of the cupboards that we could find to feed kids.

The next year, Bell got a grant for lunches and snacks. It’s part of a federally funded program that reimburses non-profits across the country for summer meals.
This type of program is crucial in rural areas, where hunger rates are higher than in more urban and suburban communities. In fact, in rural areas of Washington state, twenty percent of children are poor, compared to fourteen percent in cities. The statistics are almost the same in Oregon and Idaho. Bell sees it firsthand.

Bell : They’re probably of the poorest children and families in the area, especially out in White Swan. I mean, you’re out as far and as rural as you could possibly be. We have a lot of farm workers, and a lot of times they aren’t even making minimum wage, and they work very, very long hours. Parents work six days a week.

At the Yakama Christian Mission, once Bell fed the children’s stomachs, she turned to feeding their minds.

[Sound: hatchery]

Today, Bell’s charges are on a field trip to a fish hatchery in Prosser.

Fish hatchery worker: Let’s go look at some fish. We’ll follow O.J. up to these things.

The field trip is funded by a Feed Your Brain grant, a Washington state program. White Swan is among fifteen communities that get this grant, which also pays for other educational projects like reading activities.
Bell says that there need to be three or four more programs like this in the area to serve families.

Bell : But there just isn’t, and we’re just, we’re just barely nicking the edge.

There’s a by-product of the program that Bell takes pride in. She’s able to offer jobs to kids who were once her charges…like sixteen-year-old Janet Garcia.

[Sound: bus ambi]

Garcia helps out where she’s needed with the younger children.

Garcia: This program’s given me a lot of possibilities. That’s probably why I’m thinking to work with kids.
Garcia wants to go to a four-year college, either to build a career working with kids or to become an accountant.

Garcia: Right now, if the program wouldn’t be going, I’d have to find another job working in the fields with my parents. And maybe we’d have to pay more to find a babysitter for my brother and sister, and it’d probably be difficult.

Today, Garcia watches kids at the fish hatchery.

[Sound: van]

And then the day ends as it started, back on Belinda Bell’s van.

Bell : See you later.
Child: Alligator.
Bell: Alligator. In a while, crocodile. Adios.

Copyright 2006 Northwest Public Radio

July 21 , 2006
We left at noon one day last week. Five of us had spent the morning working on building a new pumphouse. We decided to leave early and meet up with the leaders and children of the Summer Fun Program (SFP). Being noon, they would have finished the first part of their field trip to the Nations Cultural Center and would now be having lunch. We figured that by the time we caught up with them they should be ready to begin the second half of the field trip—the public pool and swimming!

As we drove up some forty children were on the front lawn outside the pool, doing their best to maintain order and excitement—not an easy thing! Two girls sat under a tree talking excitingly about the important stuff of ten-year-olds. Three boys at the far edge of the group were laughing at one another as each tried to outdo the other by making faces to one another—who knows what that was all about. Finally, Belinda walked out of the building standing between them and the pool. The two hallowed doors swung wide as children lined up into two lines, one for girls and the other for boys. Then slowly and reverently, they entered the sanctuary of the poolhouse.

If one wonders what transformation is all about, they need only watch as children move out of the other side of the poolhouse and enter the water of a pool. Kids who were not smiling just two minutes before could not now wipe the smile off to save their life. People who would not talk to one another over lunch, now splashed and laughed alongside one another. Girls and boys who held one another at arms length were now having contests as to who could hold their breath the longest. Transformation.

Transformation doesn’t “just” happen though. It is easy to watch children at a pool having fun and playing with one another and think that is all there is to a day at the pool. But it is a little more.

SFP staff has worked with the children over the last five weeks on how to live in community. Stuff like how to listen to one another, how to recognize and affirm anger and release it in appropriate ways, why being first in line isn’t a priority, and how to pause for just a moment before acting.

Pool time is an extension of what it means to be a member of community. With all the splashing, slipping, bumping, laughing, and crying, these young people put into practice the people skills they have been learning. Granted, it is done in small ways, but it is transformative, just the same.

Of course that’s not what I was thinking when I was a kid. The pool was in town and it took quite a while to get there. It was a special place to go and a place where we could spend hours playing. Sometimes it was family who went and other times we came with our friends. We hung out, made up games, figured out how to entertain one another, learned how to get along with the kids who lived in town and went to the pool everyday, and, well, you know how it is, try to keep from being kicked out for running on the pool deck. And until one of the SPF staff said something about the intentional community building aspects of the pool, I never really gave it much thought about how much I might have learned at public pool.

For the kids, though, all of this community building stuff has nothing to do with time at the pool. Rather this is a time to get out of the heat, have fun, and get wet. For some, they almost inhale this time, because it is only one of the two or three times they will get to go to the pool this year. The reasons lie mostly in the type of workday their parents have.

During this time of year their parents work six full days a week. Then on Sunday, they are in the fields before sunrise and working. After three or four hours of work, they then run home to change and head off to church. Once church is over, they head to town to complete the weeks shopping. By the time they get home there is little time left for something like swimming at the public pool.

So, this is their time. A moment to do nothing else but hang out, have fun, get wet, be cool, laugh and tell the lifeguard “I promise not to run around the pool again.”

May 22 , 2006
May 1 and I found myself on a walk, well maybe a march, with friends and their son from a mission-retreat center down the road. After a while, a fellow pastor met us and we walked together in the midst of thousands of people of color. We headed north along one street and as we turned to the east onto the next street, standing on the corner were two men holding a sign saying, “Illegal is Illegal, and I say so!”

The next morning as I went through email I discovered a comment on the journal reflection I had sent out the Sunday prior to the march. Again, I found the three word phrase, “ Illegal is illegal.” The writer also noted, “illegal is not a label…It is currently a reality.” Well, here we are a number of weeks later and I am still considering these words. Part of the reason I continue to ponder these words is I respect the writer of them. I also find that those who respond to journal entries respond because they have taken time to consider my words and the least I can do, is to consider their words just as deeply.

In the course of thinking about these comments I am reminded terminology is important. Business uses it to influence us, politicians to get our votes, the government to have us agree with policy, and of course, preachers to move us in different directions. Therefore, the term illegal and how it is used does influence how we think and how we act.

Illegal is illegal. Well, I agree with that statement. We live in a system of laws. Laws in turn make our actions either legal or illegal. But it is our actions that are illegal, not ourselves—the person. Neither others nor we can be a legal person or an illegal person.

I am thinking of it this way. An act can be illegal. It is illegal to rob a store. If someone robs a store, the act of robbing is illegal. The one doing the act though, is a criminal. They themselves are not illegal. Therefore, the term illegal can only be applied to the act of robbing. Which begs the question, why don’t we call those who cross the border, which is an act that goes against the law, criminals?

There are at least two reasons.

One reason comes from more of an economic standpoint. The American lifestyle is intricately tied to low-income labor. For instance, roughly 25% of all farm labor has illegally crossed the Mexican-American border. Almost 15% of all construction workers have also crossed the Mexican-American border illegally. There are many more in all sectors of life where folks have acted against American law—hospitality workers, landscapers, housekeepers—but farm labor and construction are the percentages that come to mind.

When we begin to think about these kinds of numbers, it becomes apparent that few people want to call these folks criminals. For if they truly were eliminated from the workforce, food prices would skyrocket, affordable housing would be affordable to a lot fewer people, road and highway maintenance would drop, and disaster areas like the Gulf Coast would take many more years to recover. Additionally, if the term criminal is used instead of illegal immigrant, new prisons must be built to house these criminals, which in turn would drain dollars from other wants and needs…like education.

The bottom line is, the term criminal is not used because few people are willing to give up their current lifestyles of low-cost food, housing, nice roads, and great vacation destinations. Whereas, the terms illegal alien or illegal immigrant allows the system to continue as it currently functions.

The second reason is the term criminal is a call to action and justice. For many, I am thinking I land in this category as well, it is easier to use the word undocumented. Undocumented has a tendency to allow me to complain about the system, but as long as the status quo is maintained, I don’t have to do anything.

Calling poor people criminals though, means I am called to action and cannot stand to the side. It is one thing if I think all the mothers, fathers, and children crossing the border are bad people. But if I don’t, then allowing laws to stand on the books, which make criminals out of people who work hard to support their children and house their parents, is no better than standing off to the side and letting the system maintain the Jim Crow—segregation laws.

Using the term criminal not only requires changing current law, it requires long-term/generational commitment. Keeping with the Jim Crow example, remember the Supreme Court decision on Plessy vs. Ferguson , allowing legal segregation occurred in 1896. Not until 1954 with the Supreme Court decision on Brown v. Board of Education was law overturned. All told, there was a fifty-eight year period of law supporting the segregation of people, fifty-eight years of African-Americans being told they were not in the same class as white people, fifty-eight years of children being raised in a society telling them they were better or worse than another, based on their birth family.

Isn’t is easy to look to the past and see the evil of calling people criminal because they tried to sit in the front room at the diner, or sat on the wrong bleachers at the ballgame, or drank water from the white fountain, or sat in the front of the bus? Justice, though, calls us to recognize, it could have been us, who allowed fifty-eight years of legal segregation to occur without our acting for change. Justice calls us to see the similarities of yesterday and today and the need for us to act to end the systemic injustice of naming people criminals because of their color, or their place of birth, or simply because they no longer want their families to suffer. Justice calls for a day when children are raised without being told their parents are illegal or criminal. Justice calls for a lifetime focused on changing laws that hurt people.

Until now, we have allowed the system to make-up the phrase Illegal Immigrant. We allow it because it does not hold us accountable for our lifestyles or our laws. Instead, the phrase places all the responsibility upon those with the least amount of power, the least amount of resources, and the least amount of voice.

Seems to me, there might be a gospel call here to justice for the least of these. Another week of immigration debate stands before us. Thousands of families, millions of people do not yet have the right to their voice. So, it all lands on us who do have voice with the system we live in. Are we to allow the continued criminalization of the poor and oppressed? Or are we going to speak out in letters to the editor, emails to representatives, or at lunch with our friends? What are we to do? What does God call us to do?

May 16 , 2006
I was surprised when I first arrive in the lower valley of the great number of folk who are from Arkansas and Missouri. Many of them came here during the dust bowl and the depression, and even a generation later while they love where they are, they still deeply claim the land of their parents. Sometimes it was a husband who showed up in the valley first, sometimes a whole family. In the years to follow, as letters and money returned home, brothers and sisters and their families and friends would arrive to the valley.

“You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Isn’t that a difficult one as the immigration issue rises to the forefront this week? Remember, when Jesus was questioned with, “which commandment is the first of all,” Mark and Mathew have Jesus tagging “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” to “ 0you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength?” ( MK 12: 28-31 & MT 22:34-39 )

In a week where the question of immigration is rising up again in congress, buying into the phrase, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” may make life a little difficult as we are sure to find ourselves in discussion about immigration. We probably should have an opinion. After all, we are a people who live with somewhere around 12 million people who have immigrated to this country, many without the proper documentation. So, how do we deal with this discussion?

For me, I believe I will speak about how dependent the American economy is on our Latino immigrants. I imagine I would also speak about how the American lifestyle has always been dependent on the low cost labor of others (having been born and raised in California the history of the Chinese immigrant pops up as an example). I think I would also speak to the mindset that the least we could do for our low-cost labor base is to allow them live without fear. But more importantly, for me, I believe I would give the discussion a Christian spin based in the understanding that no one should hurt, no one should suffer and focus on Jesus’ use of this phrase, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

When Jesus takes this ancient phrase attributed to God in a dialogue with Moses, he gives it a radical understanding. Jesus’ contemporizes would have understood this phrase to be about themselves. Neighbor would have been the people who looked, sounded, and acted as themselves. They would have known the full line, “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.” ( LV 19: 18 ) Up until this point, they would have accepted these words as words that applied only to their people. Jesus changes this understanding though.

By speaking these words in the context of his ministry, Jesus broadens their meaning. No longer are they about his people/our people but they are about the people who stand at the margins—the widows, the orphans, the hemorrhaging women, the prisoners, the hungry, the naked, the Samaritans, and the strangers. Loving neighbor is about moving out, way out, beyond the bounds of social acceptability to the realm of a preference for the poor, the oppressed, and the powerless.

Now none of this is new, I imagine we have all heard this in one form or another. But putting it into action, being in discussion with others who don’t understand it in this way, well now, that’s the hard part isn’t it?

I think that it comes down to understanding ourselves. If we are going to love our neighbor as ours self, seems to make sense to really understand who we are. Who are we and whom do we want to be when we are in the same situation as our neighbor?

I am thinking of it like this. Say, I grew up in a little community where everyone knows one another. My family has lived in a beautiful setting in the mountains for generations. My grandparents, parents, and children all live not far from one another. Family and friends tell stories that go back for generations. I love my home, my community, and my country.

Today, though, I can no longer make enough money to feed my children. There is no longer work to pay for the medicine or health care my grandparents need in their aging years. I see my children’s hunger. I see my grandparent’s aches and pains. I feel their hurt in my gut. The question is, “what am I going to do about it?”

It is when we place ourselves, with our own worldview, our own desires and expectations, in the place of our neighbor that we begin to understand how Jesus meant the phrase, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

For it is in this context I leave the home I love, so my children will not go hungry. It is in this context I will leave my people whom I love, for months, maybe years, so my family may be healthy and live as people should. It is in this context that borders have no meaning. It is in this context I become aware of what it means to love my neighbor as myself.

When I place my life in the context of my neighbor, I then remember their life has been my life. I remember it was my folks who left the homes they loved in Arkansas, Missouri, Ireland, and Russia, and came to this place so my children and I could live healthy, well-fed lives without fear.

I expect the discussion will be hard this week and in the future around the immigration issue. For it calls us to go against the tide that calls for 700-mile fences, spending million upon millions of dollars for border patrol or to militarize a friendly border in an effort to save money, and making felons out of mothers and father, sons and daughters, and sisters and brothers.

Yet, do we really have a choice when we live out of a base of Christianity? For when we live our lives with a preference for the poor and oppressed, our guidelines are very easy. Gather Sunday mornings, rejoice for the work of justice done this last week, and support one another for the work needed next week. Look around, see the like-minded people in those walls of worship, and gain strength from one another. Then, enter into the world together, rise up our voices, and live the ministry of loving our neighbors as ourselves.

May 08 , 2006
I think it’s a scarcity thing. Business tells us scarcity is critical to the wellbeing of business. Find that niche where there is need, real or perceived, create scarcity, and a profit is found. Scarcity is basic to today’s business world. The problem is our society lives out this business concept as if it is real; it is taken for granted and seldom questioned.

The problem with the scarcity concept is that it leads to separation and isolation. It develops a mindset that there is only so much—take your choice of what that is, oil, water, air, open space, jobs, money, you get the idea—and when that is gone there is no more. This mindset leads people to believe that they should attain as much as they can and saveit for a rainy day. Colloquialisms have their place, but when tied to the mindset of scarcity, saving it for a rainy day, endorses a policy of separation where it is okay for people to isolate themselves from those who have not attained the same resources as themselves.

Scarcity causes the living out of life from a fear that the glass is half-empty. There is another choice though, that is to experience the glass as half-full, and believe that the resources of this world are abundant. That is to say, when choosing to live in a glass half-full world, there is no scarcity. Instead, scarcity is found to have no substance, it is not tactile—something that can be touched, but rather a made-up concept used to justify the keeping of resources that belong to everyone and to give reason for the separation of people. The glass half-full abundant world calls the created world into relationship with one another, deeply.

Don’t get me wrong, abundance does not mean unlimited resources. Abundance does not mean using resources as if they have no limit—that would be living in scarcity, as if some resources are limited and other are not. Nor does abundance occur at the individual level. Abundance comes from gaining the awareness that people cannot live separate from one another, but instead are intimately tied together in space where the wellbeing of one affects the wellbeing of all. Abundance recognizes that people live in a world where they are not unrelated from one another, but deeply interconnected and mutually dependent upon one other. It is at this stage of mutual relationship where people become aware there are enough resources for all. Living into abundance calls people into the realization God has created plenty, not only for today, but for all generations.

Living in abundance is shown to us by Moses and the story of the manna.  The people of the desert learned that when they gathered more than they needed, more than their share, and stored it until the next day, then the manna itself “bred worms and became foul” (Exodus 16: 20c).  Yet when they gathered in community, some more and some less, they found that when “they measured it with an omer, those who gathered much had nothing over, and those who gathered little had no shortage; they gathered as much as each of them needed” (Exodus 16: 18).  Living into abundance is believing there is and always will be, plenty for all, as long as all are welcomed to the table.[1]

A belief in scarcity has created both an atmosphere of storing more than is needed and a fear of others.  A fear that those people who were not born in this land will take what others have stored.  It has also created a mindset that has bred worms and become foul because it has led to an acceptance of the separation of people, and the endorsement (if not the creation) of an us and them mentality. 

We have a choice.  We can look at 12 million immigrants in this country from a political viewpoint and see them as a problem and pawns for election and reelection.  Or we can view these people from a business standpoint and see them in some cases as an asset and in some cases as a liability.  Or we can chose to regard these people, these mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, as ourselves—the created people of God. 

We live in the richest and wealthiest country in the world.  If there is any place, any land, any people who can give up the scarcity motif, it is us.  If there has ever been a country who can welcome its resident aliens, it is us.  If there have ever been a people who can open their arms and their table to others, it is us.  Today it is that time when we can leave scarcity at the border, begin living out of God’s abundance, and welcome the immigrant, with open arms, to a place at our table.

[1] Rick Lowery and Walter Brueggemann have done much work on the abundance and scarcity issue. If you would like to explore a little deeper I would recommend Rick Lowery’s book, Sabbath and Jubilee.

April 30 , 2006
To March or not to march, to go to work or not to work, to attend school or not to attend, is the question as we think about tomorrow. This question lies upon us as we consider our actions tomorrow. It is a very risky day for some. For others it is day about support. To risk or to support, begs the question, where will we find ourselves with the rising of sun?

Tomorrow is the day documented and undocumented workers and students across the country have been asked to spend one day away from work and school. When the risk appears too great, the request is to march after work and after school. This is an effort to open the people’s eyes of the country to how great the need is those whom have been label “illegal.” This is a time to bring awareness to a system, that on the surface places boundaries and laws saying to our poor Latino/a neighbors they are to stay away and at the very same moment, below the surface of acknowledgement, declares this economy cannot survive without you—please come, as long as you are willing to take all the risk, the comments, and the distrust.

What does it mean to live in the role of the undocumented? What does it mean to be a documented child of the undocumented who is always in fear of deportation? What does it mean to work and live in poverty and have many look upon you as unwanted? What does it mean to just get by and then be asked to risk job, anonymity, and safety; to bring awareness to people this structure needs me and my people to survive? I don’t know. I do know that our calling, those of us who are not in these situations, is to think about what it means for us.

From a Birmingham jail came the words,

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.

Dr. King’s words remind us we are in this together. Our neighbors who have been brought to this country to pick our food, build our homes, construct our roads, and rebuild our disaster areas, are our sisters and brothers. As such, they need our hand of support as they decide what they can afford to risk.

Our hand of support may arise in many ways. We can march in support to acknowledge we cannot survive without our brothers and sisters. We who own businesses, who survive because of these people, can give the day off and have the position available to return to on Tuesday. We can speak our voice in support throughout the day, as conversations are sure to move to the march—no matter how large or small it turns out to be.

What we cannot be is complacent in our actions or voice. I am reminded Dr. King also wrote from his jail cell,

I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

Moderation is not an option for those of us who have no risk of deportation at the end of tomorrow’s day. Our actions indicate who we are. Our actions tell our children and grandchildren who we are. Tomorrow is our day. Today we only need to decide where we want to stand—to risk, to support, or to stand off to the side.

April 22 , 2006
There is a fog lifting off Toppenish creek. A defining fog where from a distance you can see the creek fog winding through the valley giving remembrance to something more than the eye can see. Morning temperatures are in the mid-twenties and low thirties, daily highs are in the sixties, and the eastern slope melt off has begun. The creek is flowing heavy and fast but not overflowing.

A light frost arrived with the fog. A few weeks ago the seasonal laying of the irrigation main pipe occurred. The pipes belly is not full of water as anticipated but instead a frost covers its skin. Morning sun rising glitters the frost hugging pipe and pipe moves from the mental list of work to art.

Pasture grass takes what it can get. Longer days and daily temperatures in the sixties have it growing. No longer living winter survival, stems are unfolded and stretching in affirmation that spring has arrived. Longer days and higher temperatures have risen spring pasture ready for animals.

For a grazer, hay with its dry stems and leafs are filler, but two meals a day are not quite the same as spending the day foraging. Three days on pasture and life is as it should be. Mornings on grass, then time relaxing and chewing cud, perhaps a late morning nap before returning to the pasture, springs brings time to recover. Mothers fill out to their old selves’ and late winter lambs and kids learn of life with abundant food.

April 08 , 2006
As I’m having my first cup of coffee this morning I am thinking about this last week. Jill and I had the opportunity to hangout in Louisville, Kentucky at the non-profit, Urban Spirit. Urban Spirit is an inner city non-profit whose focus is on poverty issues. We were not alone though; there were also leaders from United Church of Christ/FAST, Disciples Volunteering, and Urban Spirit. We had all come together to work with young adults who had chosen to become volunteer interns (for ten weeks!) at various mission sites this summer.

As I listened to these seven young adult volunteers I heard and watched as their gifts of outspokenness and quietness, action and contemplativeness, thoughtfulness and compassion, came to the surface. I couldn’t help but think that these seven are going against the grain of society. A society that calls them to either work hard and make money for education or in their privilege, enjoy the summer and have fun because soon they will no longer have the opportunity to such freedom. I also couldn’t help but ask myself, “why aren’t there more than seven folk risking ten weeks?”

Now don’t get me wrong, I think seven is a great number, seven days of creation and rest, in the seventh year there shall be a remission of debts and slaves shall go free, and the All American Grand Slam breakfast at Denny’s restaurants have seven items—three eggs, two sausages, two strips of bacon. For creating, freedom, and eating, seven is not too bad a number!

I remember Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Everybody can be great because anybody can serve. You don't have to have college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.” These are great words aren’t they? Yet I think most of us do have a heart full of grace and a soul generated by love and we still have trouble letting go of our time and resources in the service of others. Why is that? What more is needed to bring us out of our comfort and into service of others? More preaching from the pulpit that refuses to cut us any slack? More protesting by the poor and disinherited to remind us of the need for change—now? More pretty posters on our office walls, dorm walls, and bedroom walls, espousing the words and works of Dr. King, Jesus, Gandhi, Buddha, Dorothy Day, and Confucius?

Well, as I sit this morning in a coffee shop drinking dark coffee, a particularly nice blend I might add, and eating a bagel, I think these are interesting questions for me to ponder but maybe a little too hard to deal with today. Tomorrow, yeah, that’s it, tomorrow I will give it more thought. In the meantime, I think, for my own preservation, I will just concede these young adults have a passion for justice that is way beyond my own (and maybe just a little out of whack?). Ten weeks of volunteering—hmm, is that nut meg in the bagel?, hanging out with the poor—the coffee is leaving a wonderful aftertaste on the tongue, meals in homes with no floor covering—isn’t that a nice painting on the wall, babies crying—college students in the next booth talking Socrates and virtue, field worker picking asparagus—sun glittering on spring leaves outside the window…yep, tomorrow…I’ll answer the question tomorrow.

March 29, 2006
Over the last few weeks, as this week of immigration debate drew near, it seemed prudent to leave the “letter to the editor” to friends and colleagues in urban settings. After all, why draw more attention and maybe more hurt to rural families struggling to supply our food tables? Seemed to me, many of our local friends would rather live a little more anonymously than appear in the newspapers or on television.

Well, so much for my ideal little world. Katherine, her friends, and peers from White Swan to Yakima to Prosser, have pushed what I thought as correct these last few days. It seems the high school youth have found it time to speak up and “lay down their own law,” one might say. As they watch the first debates begin on new immigration bills, they are finding it impossible to stay quite as they watch people who are far removed from their rural world of reality, attempt to create legislation that appears to have a more political bent than humanitarian. High School youth around the region are staging marches during school lunches. Sometime spreading out a little further that the school and beyond lunchtime, as might occur with high school students. Maybe not always the calmest and best organized, but I can’t help but think the most gut level, emotional, and righteous driven.

In the midst of this, Attorney General, Alberto Gonzalez, arrives today to speak at the White Swan High School. His message is on drugs and alcohol. Not that these are not important subjects, but for many of the youth, they wonder why a man whose parents were children of immigrants from Mexico isn’t weighing in on the current event, the event which will impact the lives of their friends, parents, and themselves, the immigration debate.

As I spoke to a few youth yesterday, they wondered, why is it that people don’t ask their opinion on issues that directly affect their lives. Why is the Attorney General visiting their school? Is it really out of concern about their lives? If so, why not speak about timely issues such as the House Bill that makes a so-called illegal presence in the country a felony and would require 700 miles of fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border?

These students have given this more than a little thought. They understand the irony in the Senator Frist Bill. This bill has civil and criminal penalties levied against employers of up to $20,000 for every immigrant hired and up to six month in jail for those who have a pattern of hiring immigrants. While at the same time, the bill would increase the number of visas for high-tech workers. These youth attending high school are fully aware their friends, parents, and grandparents who work the orchards, lay the irrigation lines, and pick America’s food are not likely to fall under the “high-tech worker” designation.

Like I said, so much for my ideal world of picking and choosing what needs saying. The youth have been more than willing to help me see that I have yet to develop the eyes needed to see the impact these legislation will have on their world. So, my basic thought…if we do not pay attention to the youth and their concerns, if we do not find a way to make our voice heard on behalf of those who supply us with food, then our friends, our youth, our parents, our grandparents, are going to hurt. I don’t believe that is something any of us desire. We all may not come out exactly in the same place, nor support the same legislation, but I can’t help but to think, if we put our neighbor, the poor, and the underpaid, first, I can’t help but to believe, life will be better for all.

Where to begin? Maybe a letter to the editor. Or maybe its time to hang with the youth and protest for legislation that has a more humanitarian bent with at least a tinge of justice.

March 22, 2006
Water.

This last week during our annual “how to prepare for and lead a worktrip” event, (done in partnership with Disciples Volunteering) we had the opportunity to prune willows—Basket willows, Curly willows, Australian willows—at Jerry and Margie Beardsley’s organic farm. Pruning trees for functionality or beauty was not the goal of our time though. These pruned branches are to become trees and bird habitat on the Farm!

After we finished pruning, we bundled up the limbs and took them to the Farm. There we filled five-gallon buckets with water, cut the bottoms of the limbs again, and then placed them, one by one into the buckets. Now we wait.

Waiting is always a hard thing. It’s really nothing new to say we live in a world that goes by far to fast and we need to find ways of slowing down or we will miss the important stuff. Waiting for the pruned limbs to begin growing roots gives lots of time to look for the important stuff. Last April a group of folk from northern California and Oklahoma spent a week installing culverts, vaccinating sheep and goats, and pruning trees at the Beardsley Farm. In July, the branches, now young trees, were slid into muddy waters that someday will become upland bird habitat. April to July, four months of filling the buckets with water, watching the first nubs appearing below the waterline, and then slowly watching those nubs grow into long white roots patiently waiting, desperately searching to find a place to reside, gives a good bit of time to think about the important stuff. It is a year later now and those eighteen-inch limbs that were the life of another tree last year are now on their own, a tree themselves, out in the back field. New life, time to think, and it all began in a bucket of water. Kind of a cool thing.

The week before this years pruning, the water pump shut down at the Mission. It seems that the electrical lines running from the power pole to the pumphouse were buried about fourteen inches into the ground without conduit. Over the last forty years a few cracks developed in the wires insulation. Cracks led to exposed wire, that led to an electrical short, that led to the melting of more insulation, that ultimately led to the melting of the wire itself (for those of you who are electricians, yes, the wire was not been sized to fuse!). The short and long of forty year-old wire fourteen inches below the grounds surface; three days of waiting—three days of no water for the Log Church, no water for the Friendship House, no water for the Parsonage. With help from local families and the Methodist church, we got along just fine. And wouldn’t you know it, everyone also had the time to think about how easy it is for us to take water for granted.

A few days prior to losing the water pump, I had a conversation with a woman in Chicago whose congregation works with folks in Latin America to bring potable water to their community. She spoke about the changes that came from this relationship and how both communities grew from working together to provide this basic need. This wasn’t a “Pollyanna” conversation though. She also spoke that while her community in Chicago had grown tremendously in the relationship, understanding what it means to live without good water—sickness, difficult pregnancies, death—is understood through experience. But even the slightest experience, though, can make a huge difference in how people of “clean water privilege” live. For she now experiences a congregation who has taken a little more time to think about water and understands a little better that while they wait to raise the funds to build another potable water system in another Latin community, “those” people will continue to hurt while they drink their Chicago glass of water.

It is Sunday morning and we have just returned from feeding the sheep and goats. The water trough has a thin sheet of ice floating on the top. The hard freezes of winter have come and gone. The days of two and three inches of ice are now left to next winter. The animals no longer wait on us for water instead they break the ice themselves.

Water.

March 01, 2006
The wind can be proud of its name these last few days. Not a gusting wind that rears back and throws a fastball every now and then, but a steady force that grasps your shoulders and leans its weight into you. A week ago the wind blew out of the northeast and everything, including our compost pile, froze solid. Today’s wind though doesn’t have the weighty mood of the northeastern, but the persuasive disposition of the southwestern encouraging one to pay attention.

The wind has called us to pay attention to our feeding patterns on the farm.

Outside the barn there is a forty-foot stretch of bare ground where hay is laid out in a row. The sheep and goats spread themselves along the row, eat a little, and then run ten feet on down the row, eat a little more, and run another ten feet and eat again. They seem sure someone down the row must have a better pile than themselves.

They never go near the motley white, brown patch, horned goat. One of two with horns, she knows how to use them to keep everyone away from the hay she has claimed as hers. Anyone who gets too close receives a head butt broadside into the ribcage, so sheep and goats alike have learned to leave her alone. She has the power.

Row feeding has worked fine up until now. Each sheep and goat has learned the power structure and has learned how to acquire their share of hay. The wind, though, has required us to rethink the row feeding method. Having the animals spread out allows the wind to blow through them, pick up the hay, and take it into the next field. However, when they bunch up, they block the wind, the hay stays in place, and they all get something to eat.

We now feed in two piles instead of a row. Sheep and goats alike stand side by side, bodies blocking the wind, and eating. All of them except the motley white, brown patch, horned goat. She is separated from everyone else, put into a stanchion, and fed by herself. I’m not sure this makes her happy, but all the other animals seem to enjoy their eating time a lot more.

Soon the wind will die down and we will return to row feeding. In the meantime, it has turned our attention to those questions of power—who has it and who doesn’t, what happens when someone comes along who has more power—two legged folk seem to outweigh horns, and what does it mean to have been the one in power, who could have welcomed all into community at the hay meal, and instead finds themselves separated and alone.

February 27, 2006
District games are over and the White Swan Girls Basketball Team remains undefeated! State Finals begin Wednesday night at 7:30pm!

February 20, 2006
White Swan Girls Basketball: Girls finished the season undefeated! They accrued 20 wins overall and 10 wins in Conference play, of course, 0 losses. They are now in District play and have won their first two games. The final game for District championship is next Saturday at Highland High School at 5:00 pm!

Babies and the Cold: Well, it seems as if all the lambs and kids went through birthing just fine and are now on the ground. We had reasonable temperatures and sun during most of the birthing process. That is no longer the case. The last week has seen the bottom drop out of the thermometer and left us with single digit temperatures at night and below freezing during the day.

The babies are powering through it all though. They find shelter huddled up against mom during the day. At night they are all put together in a lambing/kidding pen with lots of straw and by lying on top of one another they seem to stay exceptionally warm!

Compost and the Cold: Our composting has not held up quite as well as the babies, though. The compost piles were doing great! Reaching temperatures of 150 every other day or so, they were being turned, dropping the temperatures down to 110 to 130 and then they would slowly build back up to 150 after a few days. That is, until we had a day when the air temperature never got above 10 and the wind blew all day. The first six inches of the compost piles are now frozen, the inside temperature is about 35 and there is not a whole lot to do until we move out of the cold spell!

So, we wait for a game and warmer temperatures…

February 03, 2006
“White Swan coach Joe Blodgett knows he doesn’t have two or three tall girls he can count on to clean up rebounds around the rim…no starter is taller that 5-foot-7…‘I stress in practice a team concept,’ said Joe Blodgett, whose fourth ranked team is now [9-0 in league and 18-0 overall.] ‘I tell the posts—well, what we call posts at (5-foot-5)—to block out and that allows the athletic girls to come in and get the rebound…’” writes Paul Shugar for the Yakima Herald-Republic.

It goes without saying, but you know I am going to anyway, White Swan is proud of the Girls Basketball team!

Well, that’s it…just wanted to brag a little…yep, you heard it right 18-0 for the year, so far!

January 13, 2006
A few days ago, Belinda found a survey in the “Costco” magazine and asked us a question. Yeah, I know, the “Costco” magazines journalism is probably a little questionable, and it may say a bit more about who I am than I like—gathering news sources from the “Costco” magazine! After all, the primary focus of the magazine is to get “us” to buy something, anything, preferably everything!

Over the years, as a company, Costco has done a pretty good job when it comes to my family. For instance, when our children were children we thought we could get by with a little Costco grazing. You know what I am talking about… We would find ourselves in town around noon or in the late afternoon, and thought maybe we would go ahead and have dinner before returning home.

We figured there must be at least one item at Costco we really needed. In our food deprived stupor, we thought we could stop in at Costco, get the one item, let the kids graze on the free samples, and then go to dinner paying for one less meal.

Dinner always worked out. By the time we finished at Costco, the kids had made all the obligatory stops; they had found the drink samples, which were next to the bread. Then they headed off to the fruit and vegetables. Making their way to the main course, they found pizza, stew, or maybe an egg roll or two. From the main course, they were always able to find dessert, perhaps in the form of cheesecake!

Yep, the dinner always worked out! When we finally arrived at a restaurant, they were happy to eat chips and salsa while their parents went for the whole meal! But you know, we always left Costco with at least one more item then we intended when we went in. I’m still not all that sure we came out ahead on the deal…Maybe we never really thought it through as well as we could have!

My answer to Belinda’s question, the other day, got me to wondering how well I have thought through something else. Her question was, based of the Costco survey, “should rebuilding occur in places where natural disasters happen?” I never feel I can really answer these basic “survey” type of questions because I always want to add an “it depends.” Just the same, I knew, for the most part, I came out on the side of “no, we shouldn’t build in those areas likely to be destroyed again.”

Belinda noted that six people were asked the question in the magazine. Three said no, like me, and three said yes. The kicker, for me, came when she said the three who said no were-white and the three who said yes were-African-American. That’s when it hit me like a ton of bricks.

Here I am working with people who are not only in poverty, but historically separated from white society, and I still “don’t get it.” In that moment I was called to remember, more times than not, people in poverty and of color often find themselves in exactly the place most likely to be damaged in a natural disaster.

Just from the context of the reservation isn’t easy to see a historical reality of people who were not white, whose culture—art, dance, food, religion—is different from those of power, were separated and placed on land considered, unproductive, wasteland, or unwanted?

Isn’t it interesting that not only is rebuilding not occurring in the lower ninth ward of New Orleans, but cleanup has yet to begin? Isn’t interesting when talking about paying for possible relocation, maybe the people with the most to lose will be reimbursed for the full cost of land, housing, and resources? Isn’t it interesting this is occurring in a neighborhood where poverty is high, people of color predominantly live, and the land is historically considered unproductive and unwanted by the powerbase of the city?

The Costco survey may not have been all that deep or scientific, but I can’t help but to think it says something about who we are. Hurricane Katrina has shown how generous we can be in times of hurt. Katrina has also shown how quickly we can sweep the side of us that may be a bit ugly under the carpet. The lower ninth ward of New Orleans, our reservations, our poor rural communities, our inner city’s all have a commonality—people of color and poverty. We know racism and poverty is a problem, we know it is hurting others, even literally killing people (we watched it on television in the hurricanes aftermath), we know it keeps us from being in relationship with one another, and yet we continue to find a carpet to sweep it under.

What might we do to begin change? How might we be called to act when issues of poverty and racism is laid on our doorstep by the evening news or the morning paper? I’m not sure. I believe the base, though, must be in listening to those who are in poverty and who racism effects the most, and we must believe what they tell us.

Do we support the rebuilding of a home in the lower ninth ward or do we as a society support full reimbursement for the home? Well, I can’t help but think of those million dollar homes, overlooking the Pacific Ocean in California that slid down the cliffs into the ocean last winter. Were those homes rebuilt, did their insurance pay off in full, are those families still living in motels? I don’t know, but I think I need to consider and wonder if the family living in the lower ninth ward will be treated the same as the family living in the million dollar coastal home.

All that from a Costco Survey? Well, that’s where grazing will get ya!

December 31, 2005
The last morning of the year and it is foggy in the lower Yakima valley. Well, at least it is foggy at the Mission and Farm, who knows, somewhere in this valley the sun may be breaking through.

I reckon the idea of breaking through says a little of what this last year has been. Sometimes, like blue sky found in a foggy misty crack, there were breakthroughs in work done, in our mindsets, and in our way of being. Sometimes life and work was a little more like being wrapped in a blanket of fog, there is no doubt something is just beyond what can be seen, it can be felt—but not quite, it can be touched—but not quite, and it can be experienced—but not quite.

We leave 2005 grasping for the blue sky we can see, while having faith of the just beyond. With faith we are looking forward to 2006 and those, evenings of English as Second language classes, Spring and Summer groups who enhance the life of the Mission and community, Hiking events that bring people together to experience the land and their inner-being, Intern events where we grow by working with future leaders, and opportunities to grow in relationship with the land through pastures and animals. I imagine we may not quite get it right—but it will be experienced, touched, and felt.

As the fog lifts this morning, it slowly unwraps itself from Toppenish ridge. Sure enough, just beyond the fog, there in the hollows, near the refuge, stand four wild horses. At the fence line, looking across the valley, they seem to experience something we cannot quite see. Well, I guess we can live with that. There is always tomorrow—next year, and maybe our time to see.

Feliz Ano Nuevo!

December 23, 2005
Friends of the Mission had their house booed the other day.

A few of us were together as the story came to life. It seems that the neighbors were driving down the road hooraying and booing homes based on their Christmas decorations. The telling of the story was well done and most of us couldn’t help but laugh as we each watched the event unfold in our minds.

I knew, to some extent, the lack of lights on the house had something to do with the family’s theology—though I probably couldn’t express it at the time. I also knew that just last week I had bought a few more strands of lights for our home. And I imagine, now, that at some level I thought, “Aw, come-on, what’s a few lights?”

The next day I read, “Americans spend $8 billion on Christmas decorations, almost twice what the United States spends on aid to Africa.”* Yep, that’s right, it’s billion with a B and it’s eight of them. I couldn’t help but think, “it was only a couple strands of lights!” Hmm.

Just a few days before I heard the hooraying-booing Christmas decoration story the Mission was informed that Disciples Mission Fund (DMF), the single largest contributor to the work of the Mission, has experienced a downturn in giving this year. This lack of giving, of course, results in less money for distribution to the ministry programs supported by DMF. For the Mission, this will result in a 7.5% reduction in funding to the Mission from DMF giving.

So, want to impinge on that $8 billion just a bit? Or maybe you’re looking for a new way of giving gifts this year? Here is a thought or two.

First thought,

Maximize your tax benefit on charitable contributions to the Yakama Mission
for cash gifts made by December 31, 2005.

The Katrina Emergency Tax Relief Act of 2005 allows temporary tax benefits to individuals contributing to a qualified charity. The new legislation allows a taxpayer who itemizes her/his deductions to take 100% of the total charitable cash contributions donated between August 28, 2005 and December 31, 2005 as a charitable tax deduction up to 100% of adjusted gross income.

Gifts do not have to relate to hurricane relief.
There is no minimum or maximum amount required.

Second thought,
Send a gift to the Mission on behalf of someone else. We will send them a note (and you a confirmation) recognizing that a gift has been given to the Yakama Mission in honor of them.

Please consider a year-end contribution to the Mission. It will make a difference!

Peace and Grace…

*MotherJones December 2005

December 19, 2005
Advent.

It is that time of year where community gathers in anticipation. Hoping, no, knowing this Creator which has been of our lives from the beginning will be birthed again into our collective consciousness. It is only a matter of time.

The wait, though, is hard, isn’t? While the world around us sings songs of Christmas, we in the midst of advent, wait. I want to say, folks don’t quite get it, do they? But then we struggle as well, don’t we? with this waiting, this time of preparation, this delay of celebrating the arrival until the birth is experienced.

But the wait gives us time to think and remember in the amazing frenzy around us. We slowly begin to remember what it means to hope for the release of the prisoner. We struggle into awareness that peace is found in the heart of our enemy. We are humbled to unearth the layers of denial, guilt, and want, to find love is what we craved all along. Our joy becomes immeasurable when we have remembered to bring the poor, the weak, the destitute, and the unfavored into our lives, for now we know that without them, we were not whole.

The horizon is before us. It is almost dawn. The sky is dark, the air is cold, and yet there is a star. It seems as if it alone is enough—enough to bring us onward, towards the horizon, knowing light in all its color about to unfold. We walk together, even if we are separated by distance, as community towards that which will make us complete.

December 08, 2005
Twentytwo degrees, a clear sky, ten inches of snow on the ground, a snow packed road, trees of all shapes and sizes, a bucksaw, and energy flowing out of vehicles. Well, maybe flowing isn’t the right word for youth jumping from the trucks into the snow while not even trying to withhold the primordial screams that seem to have exploded from some deep mysterious place within.

In some weird way, I seem to get the raw energy that comes with finding the place on a gravel, now snow covered, forest road where the hunt is about to begin. Somewhere out there…there is a tree that is just right to become the Christmas Tree for the family of the youth who just buried himself in the snow pack just a few feet from the truck! Yeah, I get that.

What I don’t get as we all gather round a fire a few hours later is the shoe thing. Now imagine walking and running around for two hours in snow ten inches to a drifted twentyfour inches deep. Are your pants wet from the knee down from snow melting due to body heat? You bet! Are your hands red from snowball fights and scraping snow out from under the tree soon to become the perfect 2005 Christmas Tree? You bet! Are your feet frozen, beet red, from snow packed solidly inside your shoe because you don’t tie your shoelaces? You bet! but I am here to tell you, I don’t get that one!

When a third grader was asked if he was going to tie his shoes before heading off into the snow he said, “oh no, they don’t do that!” I’m not exactly sure who the mysterious they are, but I would venture a guess that they are those well-traveled, world experienced, cultured fourth and fifth graders! Whoever they are, they have done well at creating a worldview that controls the actions of others. Of course, having our worldview skewed by others would never happen to us adults…would it?

By the end of the day, even with my lack of understanding towards non-shoe-tying etiquette, phenomenal trees were found and loaded into the truck. A fire melted snow-packed shoes and warmed frozen hands and feet. And, of course, a few SMORES with blackened marshmallows were eaten!

November 30, 2005
Question: The largest nuclear accident in U.S. history occurred where? Think for a moment…and the answer is? Three Mile Island. Right?

On March 28, 1979 at 4:00 a.m., a failure in the secondary, non-nuclear section of the Three Mile Island plant occurred. This led to a series of events where the core experienced a loss of coolant. To ensure the core cooled adequately and to relieve pressure on the primary system, a large release of radiation from the plants secondary building occurred. “Estimates are that the average dose to about 2 million people in the area was only about 1 millirem. To put this into context, exposure from a full set of chest x-rays is about 6 millirem.”* The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission tells us “comprehensive investigations and assessments by several well-respected organizations have concluded that in spite of serious damage to the reactor, most of the radiation was contained and that the actual release had negligible effects on the physical health of individuals or the environment.”*

I figure either my heightened awareness of this event is due to the plants location between two large media markets, New York City and Washington D.C., or that the movie The China Syndrome opened at about the same time. In either case, Three Mile Island not was the largest nuclear accident in the United States.

On July 16, 1979 at 5:00 a.m., just a little more than three months after the Three Mile Island event the largest discharge of radioactive material in the United States occurred. Near Church Rock, New Mexico a dam of packed-mud failed releasing 100 million gallons of radioactive water along with 1,100 tons of uranium mining wastes into the Rio Puerco River on the Navajo Reservation. Three hours later and fifty miles downriver in Gallup, N.M., the monitoring of radioactivity revealed radioactivity at 7,000 times the allowable standard for drinking water.**

As I think about the Rio Puerco on this last day of National American Indian & Alaska Native Heritage Month, I question why I know so little of an event that resulted in establishment of one of the countries Superfund sites. Is my lack of knowledge because the area is considered isolated and has a low population count when compared to New York City and Washington D.C., and therefore not important enough to make the evening news? Perhaps it is because the spill occurred on reservation land and that in and of itself did not make it news worthy? Is it out of line to question the culture and ethnicity of the Three Mile Island area in contrast to the Rio Puerco and think that has something to do with my lack of knowledge? And isn’t interesting that every March 28 the national news comments on the Three Mile Island incident, but, as least as my memory serves, when July 16 rolls around each year I hear nothing of the Rio Puerco?

I think too often I want to use the time of National American Indian & Alaska Native Heritage Month to say, “see how good we are doing with race, culture, and ethnicity.” Instead of looking at what continues to destroy others while I enjoy a land of less toxicity. It would be one thing (granted a very large thing) if it was just the Rio Puerco and the Navajo people. But it’s not. The Hanford nuclear site (another superfund) in southeastern Washington state is tied culturally and by treaty to the Yakama’s, Nez Perce, Umatilla, and Wanapum, while air and sea-borne pollutants continue to enter into the traditional foods of the Arctic Intuits, and the people of the Skull Valley reservation continue to deal with air pollution from coal-fired electrical plants—to name just a few of the challenging pollutant conditions facing Native-Americans today.

Perhaps over the course of this next year I need to explore a little deeper as to how my life style impacts the lives of Native-Americans. Maybe then, I will be able to enter into the month of National American Indian & Alaska Native Heritage realizing greater honesty in my relationship with Native-Americans, clearer eyes to see oppression, and a tongue to speak for awareness, concern, and change.

*http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/3mile-isle.html
** The High Cost of Uranium in Navajoland by Bruce E. Johansen ( Bruce E. Johansen is a professor of Communications and Native American Studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. )

November 23, 2005
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. I figure this is not a big surprise nor is it a surprise this is the month where Americans honor the Native-American ancestry of this land. It kind of felt right to spend a little time this week reading some Native-American authors.

Jorge Noriega, in his powerful essay American Indian Education in the United States: Indoctrination for Subordination to Colonialism offered a quote that has stayed with me this week. E.A. Hayt, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, in his 1886 Annual Report said,

I [have] expressed very decidedly the idea that Indians should be taught in the English language only…There is not an Indian pupil whose tuition is paid by the United States Government who is permitted to study any other language than our own vernacular—the language of the greatest, most powerful, and enterprising nationalities under the sun. The English language as taught in America is good enough for all her people of all races [emphasis added}.

Noriega reminds us that in the destruction of cultural foundational elements, language being one, a base towards destroying culture is laid. Language grows out of the land in which a people reside. It wouldn’t be anymore surprising for a people who live in the desert to develop multiple words for heat, than a people of the forest to develop language speaking to the nuances of light filtering through the trees. Those words that rise up from the land become more meaningful through the tones and inflections of a communities language. It’s not very surprising, is it, that when language is lost, so is a chunk of culture?

The passing of time has allowed many people, conservatives and liberals alike—both theologically and socially—to look to the past, observe how the eradication of language has hurt indigenous people, and rail against the injustice. This sentiment of injustice crossing the lines of identity may arise because people who no longer remember the language of their ancestors sense there is something missing in their lives, and therefore understand the obliteration of a language. Yet, it also seems the speaking out against the injustice of –language lost– is much easier when looking to past. It’s a little harder to turn that reflection inward.

The words of E.A Hayt are similar to the rhetoric heard today concerning the Spanish language. (I think Spanish first because of my community, but the same can be said for Russian, Mong, Vietnamese, Japanese, and other languages in many of our communities.) Haven’t we all heard at least one political speech in this last year calling for a one language—English Only—United States?

Reflection serves us well two ways. First, it helps us understand those who went before us better. We begin to see how much we are alike regardless the space in time. Second, we see our actions in contrast to the past. When our current thoughts and actions line up with those of the past, which seem problematic, we have the opportunity to begin acting and speaking in a manner of justice instead of oppression.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. A thanksgiving because we have the opportunity to listen a little closer to the land in which we reside, and then make the changes needed so all have voice—voice in our own language.

November 18, 2005
Vine Deloria Jr. died last Sunday. I can’t say what it is, but there is something appropriate about him dieing in November, a month designated as Native-American month.

I have had mixed feelings as I have thought about writing this journal entry. I want to say that Deloria was one of the most influential Americans in the last century. True. I want to say he was one of the most influential American-Indians in the last century. True. I want to say he was one of the most influential theologians of the last century, and that is true. But why is it then, when I bring up his name I know most people outside the reservation and Native-American life will not know who he is?

The son of an Episcopalian Indian minister, born near the Pine Ridge Reservation, Deloria’s writings and speeches are credited for changing Indian policy during the 1960’s.

Deloria’s first book in 1969, “Custer Died for Your Sins,” brought him to the nation’s attention. His 1973 book, “God is Red,” though, called into accountability the Christian theology developed in the United States. Since then his writings have been basic reading to begin grasping the problematic nature of Christianity in modern Native-American life.

Like I said, I am a bit conflicted on what to say about a man who has had more to say to about American Christianity, then say a media favorite like Pat Robertson, but whom many of us do not know. So, I finish this entry with the words of Vine Deloria Jr.

“Who will find peace with the lands? The future of humankind lies waiting for those who will come to understand their lives and take up their responsibilities to all living things. Who will listen to the trees, the animals and birds, the voices of the places of the land? As the long-forgotten peoples of the respective continents rise and begin to reclaim their ancient heritage, they will discover the meaning of the lands of their ancestors.” (God is Red 296)

November 11, 2005
While watching the evening news the other night I was interested in a report about a school board in Florida who had just reinstated their holiday system. At one time, it seems, they had all the typical holidays found in most school systems. Many of them Christian based in addition to the secular holidays. What had made them a little different though was sometime in their past the school system also included a Jewish holiday.

All went well until one day a Muslim family asked the school board to include a holiday from their faith perspective. Instead of including a holiday honoring the Islam faith the school board decided to drop all faith based holidays.

That was when many people of the community flipped out. School board members began to receive vitriolic comments and letters from their community. People of the Christian faith expressed themselves in way that leaned more towards hate than the love one might expect. Others with a nationalistic bent slung forth speech more in the lines of “ America, if you don’t like it, leave it.”

Don’t folk get riled up when their way of life, their way of normalcy is changed? November is Native-American month and it has me thinking there are few folks in Florida who have forgotten they live in a land that has not always been “Christian.”

North America is a land who has been of God from the beginning. The peoples of this land listened and experience the Creator in wondrous ways long before Christianity wandered in. From ocean to ocean, peoples found relationship with Creator and expressed it many different ways and forms.

Different expressions of the Creator should not be surprising to any of us and certainly those of us who call ourselves Christian. We don’t have to go any further than the Christian landscape of North America to realize there are multiple Christian understandings of God.

It wasn’t that long ago when a Christian leader in America said it would be okay to end the life of a Latin American head of state. That understanding of God is quite different from many other Christian understandings of God, and is far different from many of the ancient understandings of this land.

Native-American month, November, could be used at a surface level to superficially honor the ancient peoples of this land. Or we can delve below the surface and begin to examine who we are in this land, how we relate to the particular creation of this land, how this experience influences our understanding of the Creator, and how we act upon our perceptions for the future generations. A deeper reflection of what it means to live in a landscape where relationship between people and Creator is different from Christian, but rich just the same, may bring forth true honor to an ancient people and a new people of this land.

November 03, 2005
Luke and Lydia came by the office three days ago. “Buenos Dias Luke, Lydia, how is it going?” we asked. “Bien, and you” came the quick reply and smile. It had been a wet morning so far, following rain the day before. A welcoming rain after another summer of drought, but for folks who worked the orchards it also meant another day without pay. “How’s work going?” Belinda questioned. “When the rain ends we have three more days of work. The Fuji’s are almost done and then all the apples will have been picked,” Luke said.

It is the same each year and each year it is hard for me to comprehend. By mid-November, a large number of families will no longer have work. This lack of work will continue until sometime in March when the first pruning begins. I think my lack of comprehension, in part, comes from the days when I worked as a carpenter. There were times when a project would shut down for a week or two because of weather. There were other times when a month may go by between projects, but never four months without work.

At the time, I felt it a hardship to go without work and pay. Today I look back and begin to see what I could not at the time. My wages were union wages. Wages developed on the basis that a carpenter does not always have the opportunity to work year-round. Somewhere along the line, people who went before me saw the importance of developing a wage system that took into account the slow times of construction, and worked to adjust wages appropriately. For carpenters to receive a livable wage, society, as a whole, agreed that the value of a carpenter’s work is great enough to pay a little more for housing, bridges, buildings, and power plant facilities.

Isn’t interesting society has yet to do the same for those who provide our food supply? Our society has become so closely tied to the “big box” food suppliers these days (you may read firms like WalMart here) that these firms are able to push down what is paid for food (you may read $.25-.70/lb for apples here). This results in small farmers and ranchers struggling to make a living.

It is hard to voice the heartache I hear from the farmers and ranchers of this valley. These are small farmers and ranchers—not the agribusiness firms where much of today’s food supply comes from—for they are working only five hundred to a thousand acres. The heartache is seldom for themselves, though. This heartache comes from awareness that each day, fewer people in American society understand the true value of their food. They are aware this lack of understanding results in unfair prices paid for produce, which in turn results in less for their families and the families of their farmworkers. In the end, neither the farmer nor the farmworker receives the wages I did years ago as a carpenter.

Today may be the last day of work for Luke and Lydia. This will relate to insecurity, fear might be a better word, about their families food supply. Because of this insecurity they along with many others, will start accessing the food bank. But those of this valley are not alone when it comes to the security of their food.

This week the Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture released the 2004 food insecurity and hunger report ( www.ers.usda.gov/publications/err11 ). The report notes that food insecurity in the United States increased by 1.9 million people between 2003 and 2004. One point nine million, hmm, relating that number as people is more than I can imagine. I’m not sure that all the natural disasters in the last few months add up to 1.9 million people. Considering this number is in addition to the 36.3 million people already living in food insecure households in 2003, it is quite staggering.

October 28, 2005
Olga has been the matriarch of the goatherd for as long as we have known her. She has that elder goat thing down. If one was not sure of whom the boss is you quickly learn when you experience the arrival of a new group of goats.

New arrivals unload from the trailer and then find an area in the yard where they gather and orientate themselves to their new surroundings. Then they begin to mingle with the existing goats, test a few relationships, and then as a group, meet Olga. Olga always stands a little off to the side when new goats arrive watching the interaction of the new goats with the old as if sizing up how to implement a new relationship structure. As the new group comes over to Olga the leader of the new arrivals breaks off and ambles (if you can call what goats do ambling!) up to Olga.

It’s the eye thing these two do that is a little weird. There’s nothing quite like a goat eye. While the goat’s eye has similarities to the shape and structure of a cat’s eye there is something much different. I’m not all that sure though, why, after looking into the eyes of a goat and a cat (This morning I picked up Ricky, one of the barn cats, and held him next to Olga to get a good comparison. And yes, the cat’s eye is elliptical and vertical while the goat’s eye is a slit and horizontal, but I think similar just the same—they ain’t like mine! Neither Ricky nor Olga thought this was a good idea though and I’ve got the cat scratch to prove it and I think a bruise is starting to appear on my left shoulder where Olga thought a well aimed head thump was appropriate. Well, never said I was the brightest gem in the bowl...) why some ancient people lifted up the cat in a royal feline way while the goat got shortshrifted with the role of the scapegoat or worse, representing evil. But, back to the eye thing. They stand there, Olga and the new group’s leader, looking each other in the eye as if they can read one another’s life history. This goes on for a while, those four horizontal slit eyes sizing up the other. They stand looking at one another with little muscle movement as if waiting for the other to back down. Never happens though. Instead, as if by some unspoken consensus, they both rise up on their hind hoofs and fall back down with their heads meeting one another just above the eye. This happens once, sometimes twice, seldom three times, and though not always conclusive from this human’s point of view, in the end, Olga remains the matriarch.

October 10, 2005
During the last few weeks we have been mowing and disking, on and off, roughly ten acres of land. For almost thirty years, the land has been fallow. Walking across the soil, one experiences a slight undulation upon the land. Neighbors say thirty years ago, after a bad year for corn, the owners walked away from this land. Old reel irrigation ditches (row irrigation) were left behind. Slowly, with time, the row mounds have silted into the ditches, a re-leveling of sorts, leaving slight straight mounds running north to south across the land.

Hours on a tractor allows for a bit of thinking. Though the mounds are slight these days, every time the tractor is driven east to west, it begins to leap about as if it were barefoot in a sticker patch. After a while, the bouncing is bound to jar loose—even in the most hard headed of minds—the text from Isaiah 40, “Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain” (v. 4). Mowing the land would be a lot nicer with a little level ground.

Thirty years and those twelve-inch ditches are still readily apparent. Driving across ditches created thirty years ago is a reminder of how quickly and easily humanity can change the lands surface. Thirty years is also a reminder that the timeline of the land is something quite different from that of humanity. Thirty years and those twelve-inch ditches are now one to three inch ditches. The land is slow to change, but it seems to know it has the upper hand, it is in it for the long haul, and in time, the uneven ground shall become level.

Removing the mounds will take a matter of hours on the tractor. The ground will be level again, not with the same grace and care of the land, but with thoughtfulness and attention towards what might be beneficial to the future. Perhaps the lesson Isaiah learned from the land is to pay attention to today’s landscape. Notice the unevenness, the mountains and valleys of our making, and begin to level the disparity. Perhaps the teaching of Isaiah is to begin the work and then explain to the next generation why living on uneven ground is not healthy for those in either the mountains or the valleys. Maybe short-term care is like tractor work, changing the roughness and disproportion of the landscape is critical. While justice may be like the land, the true work of leveling occurs in lifetimes, and through generational care the landscape will become level.

September 17, 2005
Three days ago, we were hiking in the high country. Moving over the top of a ridge we found ourselves in a sloping meadow, maybe a couple of acres in size, with a small pond at the lower edge now dry at the end of the summer. Meadow flowers brown stemmed, a few upright and many lying on top of the grasses, gifts the mind revisualization of Spring.

Unexpected offering arises from a meadow at this altitude. Huckleberries who have found their way to the high country are ripe. Long after they have given their fruit in the low country, the small purple fruit hangs partially hidden beneath the leaves in this high meadow.

A moment experienced which is neither a flash of lighting, nor a burning bush, yet a gift and a remembrance of creation—Creator.

September 9, 2005
When I began writing the first few paragraphs of the Update, talk centered around this weeks effort in grant writing, our struggle with decisions around transitional housing for homeless women, and the effort towards developing new water sources for a community who works with the poor on the west side of the reservation. That is where the writing began, but like most everyone else these days, it is hard not to see and question our experiences through the eyes of devastation. And so, instead, I wonder.

I wonder what will happen to the poor of this country over the next twelve months. As a country and I dare say the world, we have watched in horror as the poor were left behind in New Orleans and the surrounding areas to suffer the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. We have seen what it means and we continue to witness the suffering that occurs when thirty percent of a community is poor. It’s hard to imagine, isn’t it, to know what it means to struggle for housing, food, and clothing on a daily basis and then have what little you have taken away. It’s even harder to comprehend being in that circumstance and know that your political influence is so small, the wealthy and middleclass will be cared for first, and only then will care be directed towards your family. I wonder what will happen to the poor of this country, tomorrow.

Today you can hear uneasiness in the conversations with mission centers and non-profits who work with the poor across our country. In the last five years, they have experienced financial downturns in the aftermath of 9/11 and the Indonesian tsunami. In order to survive to serve the poor of their community, tomorrow, they cut critical programming. Experience makes them wonder if this time will be different. Will people give, as they have never given before, to alleviate the suffering in the south and continue to give to the existing critical need? I wonder.

I wonder, because it means to meet critical services for the poor we will all have to live poorer. It’s a hard row to hoe in these times when many of us feel we are being hurt with higher gas bills, high health care, higher mortgages, and the list goes on, doesn’t it? Yet, in this country, we continue to live with 37 million Americans in poverty. If there is a time to begin changing how we use our resources, I wonder if it is today.

Perhaps the poor will begin to have recognition because of this event. Up until now, most folks have not experienced the poor on a daily basis. They live in communities unlike our own. Their children go to schools where our children do not. When they are with us, we seldom recognize them as they clean our motel rooms or hand us a burger at Mc Donalds. Maybe Katrina will be the catalyst to open our eyes to those who struggle to attain what many of us think of as the basics. I wonder.

Then again, perhaps there is a better approach than wondering, maybe, it is a move towards action. A few things come to mind, continue to contribute to the missions and non-profits you gave to yesterday. Know they were struggling then and they continue to struggle today. Give to the Katrina victims. We all should share their loss and hurt, if we eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches instead of going out for lunch or if we choose to eat most of our dinners at home this next year and give the savings away, imagine the impact. Be critical of what is going on politically. For instance, congressional committees have instructions to cut $35 billion from mandatory programs by September 16. Some of the potential areas that may be cut are SSI for the elderly and disabled, Medicaid, Medicare, Food Stamps, TANF (welfare) and the Earned Income Tax Credit.* Lending our voice on behalf of those with the least political voice can make an amazing difference.

Health sometimes arises from times of struggle. What might happen if we participated in one great effort to shift societal structure to a preference for the poor? What might occur if we made a preference for the poor generational? What would it mean to our children, our children’s children, and those beyond if we insist that suffering shall end? I wonder what kind of land would rise up if the disabled, the sick, the poor, the elderly, and the children were first.

I wonder.

*Faithvoices.org

September 02, 2005
The thing about the end of the summer is that it isn’t really the end of the summer. Even though summer programming ended and school has begun the weather forecaster continues to say the summer season will be with us for a while longer. Just the same, it feels as if a new season is upon us! After all the days are a little shorter and while the heat continues to accentuate the days, the nights are cooler. The shift in work and outlook at the Mission is much different from just a few weeks ago. Most of the visitors to the Mission have come and gone for the year, a review of income and expenses and development of next years budget is now in the works, and revamping for youth in arriving in the afternoons as opposed to all day is under way. Daily life is so different from just a few weeks ago, it seems as if we entered onto a fifth season that has little to do with a shift in weather, but a lot to do with lifestyle!

Mission is much different from just a few weeks ago. Most of the visitors to the Mission have come and gone for the year, a review of income and expenses and development of next years budget is now in the works, and revamping for youth in arriving in the afternoons as opposed to all day is under way. Daily life is so different from just a few weeks ago, it seems as if we entered onto a fifth season that has little to do with a shift in weather, but a lot to do with lifestyle!

Now a shift in thought…a good transition isn’t coming to mind, so I am just going to make a leap here!

Many of you are joining us for the first time with this Mission Update! Welcome! Here's a few words as to why we do an email Update.

Years ago Mission Staff felt that it was important to begin informing people on a regular basis about what was happening at the Mission. The Drumbeat, the Mission newsletter, was at that time the primary means to inform about the Mission, but like most quarterly newsletters by struggling entities, it did not have the space to inform people about what was happening at the Mission; nor did it always get out four times a year. In the meantime, the internet and email had become major means of communication for all ages! So began the weekly Mission Update. It doesn’t always go out weekly, we may not get anything out all summer, but weekly has a nice friendly sound and it gives us a bit of an incentive!

Our hope for the Update is to give a wide base, informative accounting on the Mission. Of course, we hope to tell about what is happening in our programs and in our community. Yet we hope to give more than that. Being a rural mission center, we know the work of the Mission is simply the everyday lives lived by staff. As such, the update is reflective of the staff’s work, which in turn is reflective of the staff’s hopes and dreams, highs and lows, and theology. By connecting you to the daily experiences, theological beliefs, social viewpoints, and political standings of staff, through poems, sermons, and reflections, we hope to give a better understanding as to the why the Mission programs as it does. In the end, we hope you find the Update conversational and illuminating

Because this is email, we want to hear the thoughts triggered from reading the Update! We do not always have time to respond, but we always read them. We believe that by listening to the thoughts and theologies of many, the Mission will become stronger and more reflective of God in our midst. So don’t be shy, let us know what you think!

Remember you can find past Updates as well as the current at the Mission’s website www.yakamamission.org under the button ‘Update.’ You can also see photos pertaining to the updates there, but because photos do not always work well in everyone’s mail, we seldom attach them to the Update email.

Welcome!

June 23, 2005
Sand isn’t what it used to be. Years of wind, rain, and human manipulation has shifted the sand from where it once lay. What sand once covered, wood now stands exposed. With a tractor pushing sand over there and a bucket lifting sand over here the clay soil below becomes exposed.

Extracted from the ground clay is molded into balls and saved. Hours after the initial uncovering the transport have arrived to move one of the clay balls.

Kyle picks up the ball to show his mother as they get ready to leave that afternoon, but first runs over to Tim. Kyle then speaks the first memorial words of the summer sandbox, “can you clean the dirt off my mudball?”

June 11, 2005
They had just returned from the pasture. It was a Sunday afternoon, the temperature moderate, a clear day with a few clouds floating in from the southwest, and a good time to walk and talk about the goats they brought to the Mission a few weeks earlier. Maro and Marta have raised goats for a number of years, but due to this years drought orchardist’s are removing trees to reduce their water supply need. Few trees, in turn, mean fewer jobs and days of work. Lack of work leads to little choice, it’s more important to feed the family today than to feed goats in hope of food tomorrow.

This last year saw the Mission’s farming program reach a point where local people can now raise a few animals. When families go through hard times there is now a place where their animals can live, birth and raise their babies until they get back on their feet. For others who live in houses with little or no acreage and raising animals is impossible, they now have the opportunity to raise a few animals to help support the family. Kind of like a community garden, but for animals instead of vegetables.

The Mission is slowly moving towards building a herd of animals of others. Two local families have goats who now call the Mission home. Each group of goats is raising kids on multiple types of grasses and weeds! For identity purposes, each family of goats has their own ear tag so they are recognizable. In time, I expect, we will have goats, sheep, and perhaps a steer or two wandering the pastures each with their own special, color and size, ear tag that sets them apart from everyone else.

They had just returned from the pasture and we all sat down to have water, lemonade, and maybe a cookie or two. Three daughters sat with us at the table. Each has a unique personality that is abundantly apparent when not sitting with adults. Today, though, they are and their individuality is tempered at they sit quietly, very quietly!, listening to adult talk. Any attempt to bring them into the conversation brings at best a one word answer and most of the time a smile. When they do talk it’s most often the result of the adults having trouble communicating the children become interpreters. Cookies are politely not touched until urged to have one and then it is only one until pressed by the next adult sitting around the table.

Cookies eaten, lemonade drank, and conversation bounced from one idea to the next, as will happen around the table. Topics spring from health care to education to agriculture when Jill asks the question of Maro and Marta as to what they think of the new National Identification Card. Maro thought for a second—really, it didn’t take much more time than that—and said it was like being ear-tagged. The insight quieted everyone for a moment!

Looking around the table that afternoon and remembering a light meal at another table earlier in the morning, one begins to feel the impact of such control at a gut level. Conversation moves to whose security is at hand with such legislation. When viewed outside the halls of congress and the realm of politics, and viewed in the agricultural lower valley of Yakima it becomes apparent that the security of the two youngest American citizens at the table is not what the ID card is all about. Having undocumented parents and a sister who have lived in the States for thirteen years is not very comforting, nor secure, when they can be deported at any time. How do seven and eleven year-olds survive if their parents do not return from the fields?

It may not be ear-tagging exactly, after all, we are tagging ourselves. This time around, it will be the citizens who are tagged with documentation—indicating who are in and who out. Yet we all know we live in a non-agrarian society today and we no longer raise food for ourselves. It is apparent the foodstuffs for the tagged come from the work and grace of the non-tagged. At some level, the tagged are truly aware of this reality because for decades the tagged have allowed the non-tagged to hang around as long as they are out of eyesight, out of earshot, in the fields, and not complaining. And these days, few have the freedom to risk complaining.

From a Christian perspective, how might we justify a world of tagged and non-tagged? Certainly, there are sheep and goats who roam the Mission’s pastures with tags in their ears identifying them to their owners. There is also text, such as in Matthew that may be used to support tagging by speaking about shepherds separating the sheep from the goats. But, I expect, there is little theological justification for a world of separating tagged and non-tagged—sheep or goats. Rather what comes to mind is the beauty found in both goats and sheep—non-tagged and tagged—in the ancient Song of Solomon text.

How beautiful you are, my love,
how very beautiful!

Turn away your eyes from me,
for they overwhelm me!
Your hair is like a flock of goats,
moving down the slopes of Gilead.

Your teeth are like a flock of ewes,
that have come up from the washing;
all of them bear twins,
and not one among them is bereaved.
(vv. 4:1a, 6:5-6)

May 26, 2005
Jill, Belinda, and I were hanging out with one of the neighbors last week. Jesus and Maria, like many of our neighbors, do not have all the needed papers to be called a “documented person.” You know, they are the ones who come up in our conversations about immigrant people in the States. They are those people who on the Sunday morning talk shows are the undocumented worker or the illegal. Maria and Jesus run the gamut from potential terrorist to the people who are taking jobs away from hardworking Americans.

These days Jesus and his wife Maria are in the orchards at five o’clock in the morning. They are thinning the apple trees this time of year. Thinning is laborious work, but more than that, from my perspective, is this work requires a person to spend the entire day on the four-inch platform we call a ladder step. The work itself consists of picking apple blossoms from tree branches so when the apples begin to grow there is sufficient room for the apple to grow to the size and shape required by us before we are willing to buy. Thinning is delicate work and small hands and fingers are best—Jesus smiles, placed his arm around Maria, squeezed her shoulder with a large brown weathered hand and said Maria can thin much faster than he can and helps him finish his trees. Each tree requires a process of climbing the ladder, thinning, going down, moving the ladder, and climbing back up again…and again. Sometimes an orchard has been watered the day before, the ground is no longer solid, and the ladder legs slowly sink, never all of them at the same rate, which makes it interesting for the worker standing on a four-inch platform, twelve feet in the air reaching out to finish the top of a tree. When thinning a workday lasts ten to twelve hours. The end of the day means no more four-inch ladder step but to have feet fully supported from heal to toe.

The work is hard and not altogether injury free, but as we hung around, Jesus talked about the wellbeing that comes from making money to not only support his children and give them the opportunity not to work the fields as adults. For Jesus and Maria, the last place they want their children working is in the orchards.

They laugh when we talk about the Sunday morning pundits and the people who think they are taking jobs from Americans. “Who else,” Jesus laughs, “would thin blossoms from a tree for one dollar?” Then again, they are fearful when we speak of the pundits who talk about the national ID card and terrorism. “Not many of them who are on TV and have so much to say about who we are,” said Jesus, “have spent a day thinning trees!” And we all laugh.

Jesus’ perspective of his adopted country is insightful and probably more important for Americans to hear today than most of the Sunday morning talking heads. If his perspective does not hit a chord in our American consciousness, then maybe his and Maria’s life should. All they want is to have their children—grandchildren—great-grandchildren to live without fear of going hungry, to have a roof over their heads, and to be free to voice who they are. Probably the same thing most that our immigrant parents—grandparents—ancestors wanted. Perhaps it should surprise and shame us to think the wages they make today are not much better than that of our immigrant forefathers and mothers. Kind of makes one wonder where justice is found, when we bite into an apple given to us by people who love their children so much they are willing to thin our trees for a buck.

April 29, 2005
What would it mean to those of us who call ourselves Christian if we could no longer have wine because the grapes did not return to the vine this year? Or what would it mean if the wheat did not grow and we were a loss for bread? While the question may seem relevant in a time of ecological concern for the land, it may not seem urgent. Nevertheless, for some of our family and neighbors in God these are not extraneous questions.

The Spring Run is late. Worse still, the number of returning salmon is less than half of expected. As Spring neared there was an anticipated return of 250,000 salmon, today less than 100,000 are projected. The devastation affects everyone.

Religion has such a major role in the life of the people that commercial fishing cannot begin until the “churches” have enough salmon for their needs. The Longhouses and Shaker churches each need about 200 salmon to get them through the year. Whenever there is a service, people eat together. From weekly Sunday morning services to yearly feasts honoring the food of the land, the bread is broken and the salmon eaten.

The late and light salmon run means the churches are allowed 100 prior to the opening of the commercial season. The number 100 gives little solace when, over a month into the season, the busiest Longhouse on the reservation, in Toppenish, only has 50 in the freezer, the 1910 Shaker church have caught 12, and the hatchery gave the Independent Shaker church in White Swan a salmon for their annual root feast.

Imagine what it means to have a midnight service where all eat the traditional foods, but one is missing. Songs and prayers are given and the naming of each food occurs before partaking, but one is missing. Imagine what it would mean if Christian churches could no longer partake in the table. No wine, no bread, what does it feel like?

The importance in imagining the lack of wine, bread, and food is that it is real. It may not feel real to mainstream America today, but it is happening now, for a generation or two down the line, as it is for the Yakama people today. It just might be time to act as if the wine grapes did not return this year.

April 18, 2005
Spring…
Irrigation water is set to begin running anytime, at least where we are located. The water has been running for a couple of weeks now, but when located at the far in of the ditch, it takes a few weeks to arrive.

Those with irrigation wells have begun to irrigate. Orchardist’s have little choice as temperatures drop into the thirties and the buds threaten to freeze. Cold mornings bring on small remembrances of the winter as ice clings to pasture grass and tree blossoms.

Babies are arriving. Two mothers…four kids arrive and life changes. It is the first birth for one doe and she struggles to live into a new life of having two kids require all of her time. Life, age, experience…the other doe flows into life with kids and a young doe discovers.

Four folks spend a spring week living mission. Sixty feet of culvert is placed ready for water. Summer garden seeds find their way into started trays. Wood pallets no longer carry seed but find use as compost bins. Spring sage with full leaf and pungent aroma find prayerful life.

Morning sunrises arrive at six thirty.
Spring...

March 31, 2005
Dear Editor,

I was a Taco Bell fan. I loved their bean burritos and tacos, which were very delicious. Whenever my mom and I would go out to town, we would stop by Taco Bell to get something to eat. I even got the nickname Taco because my last name is Bell. But even though Taco Bell was one of my favorite places to eat, I had to give it up. It wasn't because of Lent and it wasn’t because I grew out of it, it was because Taco Bell wasn’t playing fair. Since 2001, I have been a part of a boycott against Taco Bell. Taco Bell has been partially responsible for inhumane working conditions and low wages for farm workers in the Florida tomato industry. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers, CIW, put on rallies, went on marches, and told the truth about what was going on behind the Taco Bell wrappers. On March 12, 2005, the boycott finally ended. Taco Bell agreed to pay an additional penny per pound and to improve working conditions in the Florida’s tomato fields. Taco Bell’s representatives stated, “With this agreement, we will be the first in our industry to directly help improve farm worker’s wages.” Now, I can eat at Taco Bell again and enjoy those yummy burritos. The citizens’ boycott worked, just like Margaret Mead has said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed it’s the only thing that ever has.”

Katherine Bell

March 17, 2005
So. Last Tuesday a few of the youth and I are repairing fence and hanging gates. The fence has seen its better days. Years of being rubbed against to scratch an itch neither the head nor foot can reach along with animals hanging over the top to get to the greener grass on the other side have taken its toll. A fence that is no longer pretty, but functional with a little bailing wire here and splicing a bit barbwire there.

To make life easier, a couple of pens received new gates. On the other hand, having animals in the pens the gate is going between does not make the life of installing the gates easier. With the arrival of four inquisitive kid goats last week, having a big hole in the fence with a bunch of two legged critters grunting and groaning is an invitation to join in on the fun! The gates now do their interminable swing thing, but not without the help of kids running between the feet of the installers and adults believing anything tall enough to hold a gate, must at some level, be a scratching post.

As we finished and prepared to put tools away one youth stood in silence. At first there is the thought he was taking a moment to admire his work. Then we all looked at one another, then at him, then to where he was looking. Over the ridges to the west, just a hint to the north of Mt. Pahto, ash was quickly raising thousands of feet into the sky. Moving quickly up and to the northeast, we stood in silence as it expanded and drifted in the early evening sky…moment of silence for all.

Life means something a little different from a moment ago in this presence of unexplainable power. Unvoiced questions and conversation arise like the ash in the sky. In a few moments, the life of goats, humanity, and the earth have a dignity not noticed in the hanging of the gates. Now, it seems, there is a connectedness—an unexplainable mysterious connectedness.

March 15, 2005
Three or four years ago, our youth came home from summer camp saying we could no longer eat at Taco Bell. While at camp they had learned from Disciple Peace Interns, folks in Florida were not being paid a fair wage for the tomatoes they were picking. Boy, were they fired up! Since that day, because of our youth, the Mission has supported the Taco Bell boycott. That’s a lot of tacos for this group of youth!

The youth talked and prodded others to think about the boycott. They have also taken their share of harassment over the boycott. Today, though, they are coming to awareness that while the work of caring for others is not easy, it is fruitful!

Press Release

Indianapolis , Ind. (DNS) – March 11, 2005 - Disciples joined church-based groups and others around the country in applauding the agreement that ends a four-year boycott of Taco Bell restaurants. Yum ! Brands, parent company of Taco Bell Corp., announced on March 8 a detailed plan to improve working conditions and to increase the income of farm workers in Florida tomato fields.

This announcement came as the Truth Tour, a week of protests from March 6-12 by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) and their allies at the Louisville, Ky. headquarters of Yum.

The boycott was launched in 2001 by CIW, the Florida-based farm worker organization, to protest the inhumane working conditions and low wages of farm workers in the Florida tomato industry.

“This boycott is over and it has been a great victory for tomato pickers in southern Florida,” expressed Arnold Nelson, president of Disciples Home Missions, which has helped coordinate boycott efforts on behalf of the denomination.

According to CIW, Taco Bell “sets a new standard of social responsibility for the fast-food industry” by agreeing to “a penny per pound payment as demanded by the farm workers and agreeing to improve working conditions in Florida’s tomato fields.” Taco Bell president, Emil Brolick, adds that “with this agreement, we will be the first in our industry to directly help improve farmworkers’ wages.”

Disciples joined the Taco Bell boycott in October 2003 after a resolution adopted by the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) during its General Assembly in Charlotte, N.C.

Disciples Home Missions, the division that coordinates mission in North America, was instrumental in monitoring the boycott and in organizing Disciples participation.

“While this successfully concludes Disciples Home Missions' commitment to the General Assembly regarding this resolution, it does not end our concern for the unfair working and living conditions of farm laborers in south Florida and across North America,” added Nelson.

Disciples Home Missions hopes to establish a long-term relationship with CIW so that all Disciples can continue to be involved in this important ministry.

Read the joint press release issued by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and Taco Bell at: http://www.discipleshomemissions.org.

To learn more about this boycott and other injustices faced by farm workers, go to: http://www.ciw-online.org.

March 03, 2005
Could March come and go and there be no talk about basketball? I don’t think sooo! The hardwood floor has felt the dimples of the ball bounced against its smooth surface thousands of times this year. As if to let no bounce go unnoticed, the floor has also taken its pound of flesh in skinned knees and elbows. There was no dissuasion for the girls and boys teams of White Swan though. Unrelenting practices, come from behind games, and the Districts have come and gone. Today, the teams, having pushed through Districts, play their first games at State!

For years, the girls team has brought a great record into Districts only to lose to a team they had beat earlier in the year. This year, due to injury and pregnancy, two of the top players were out for a few months. In the face of adversity, team members stepped up; the girls’ basketball team finished the year strong, blew through Districts, and is ready for State!

Games begin today and as Sherman Alexie might say, “it is a good day to play basketball!”

February 17, 2004
Winter break began yesterday. You know, it’s that break thrown together—that can always be canceled—should winter snow or ice cause the cancellation of schooldays. Little snow and almost no ice mean the cancellation of zero days, leading to three full days off school. The kids are ecstatic!

The parents, though, you ask. Just how ecstatic are they? As soon as the morning frost melts from the playgrounds, parents and children find their way to the Mission, the school, and the Methodist Church (the three places where a parent can find a swing or a basketball court). Youth running, sliding, slamming tether balls, tripping, falling, and crying in the midst of parents mediating, yelling, consoling, developing new games, kissing owie’s, and laughing. A child’s world is created, falls apart, and then is healed by the parent—all before noon! Ecstatic may be a little strong to describe the parents, but it is clear that for all the turmoil, the playground is the place to be with their child at this moment.

One day down, two to go, then it is the weekend, and then it is a holiday! Not only that, they say the sun is going to shine every day and the temperatures will rise above freezing every morning. Children and parents, playgrounds and sun, the world seems to call us to experience an ecstatic moment!

February 10, 2005
Remember walking past that painting? You know, the one with the unreal sunset. What was the painter thinking? Didn’t the painter understand that everyone who takes a quick look at the painting has a lifetime of looking at sunsets, and knows what is real, or not. Who in the world, would portray a moment, where a ridge struggles to meet distant mountains but clouds swallow it up before the meeting can take place. Clouds who compose a sonata that is just a little too misty, a little too light, a little too wispy to have been played. The sun, in the meantime, has moved below the horizon, a moment ago, leaving in its wake a brightness far too bold to be authentic. The sky fills with colors over the ridge-cloud-mountain juncture, yet a darkening infuse the remaining sky. The entire painting has an aura to it where the essence of all is blended into a spirit of consciousness. Remember the last time you saw that painting?

Well, that was last night’s sunset.

February 03, 2005
With all the weather effecting many parts of the country—rain, blizzards, wind, sleet—we just have not had much! The lows at night drop just below freezing, but days continue to rise above freezing. The amount of snow on the ground this winter has been very light and without the freezing temperatures has not stayed around for more than a week and a half. Watching people digging out of snowdrifts and sliding down highways on sheets of ice, one almost feels guilty having such a light winter, almost.

This being the Missions first year with livestock since…well, we don’t know, the light winter has been a gift. We had our first lambing of the year, about a month earlier than we expected! So, it was nice to not have snow on the ground!

Peace to all of you struggling with a hard winter…

January 27, 2005
Fog has been a part of the lands life for the last four days. This is not a fog whose life begins on water and is experienced rolling onto treed shoreline. No, this is a fog rising into existence from the dirt. A ground fog living life attached to the dirt which gave it being. Like the dirt that surrounds and fills the voids between pebbles and rocks, the fog takes on its parent characteristics and drifts into voids above the ground. A creation of more space than substance folds itself into life once thought full.

Gray to its voided core, a mist seemingly knowing life is short, but wanting to be known, acknowledged, even affirmed, penetrates the fabric of life, and becomes an intimate part of creations experience. Life is touched in feeling the moist cosmic fibers. There is a taste in the dampness. Smell of earth and water mulls within the moment. Dampened hearing is itself, communication.

Fog. Land, water, and air join for a brief moment. Is its existence asking a question, making a comment, or is it just the lands life for the last four days?

January 01, 2005
There are few words that adequately express our feelings about the tsunami tragedy in the Indonesian area. We would lift up the words of Chris Hobggod, General Minister and President of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and Charisse Gillett, Moderator of the church,

“We are in solidarity with our partners in those lands, the councils of churches and all other communities of Christians and, indeed, all people of faith, who have rallied to give aid in this terrible crisis. We support Week of Compassion, our living and loving presence in this sea of suffering.

[We} urge all Disciples to pray and give. We thank God for the grace and strength provided to all who suffer and all who help.”

Also, you may take a look at a letter from Geunhee Yu, Executive Pastor for North American/Asian Disciples (NAPAD) that was sent to NAPAD pastors and congregations. The letter can be found at http://www.disciples.org/internal/news/tsunami_NAPAD.htm

Below are a few relief organizations you may consider.

Week of Compassion at: http://www.weekofcompassion.org
AmeriCares
Action Against Hunger
ADRA International
American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, Inc.
American Jewish World Service
American Red Cross
Association for India's Development
CARE
Catholic Relief Services
Christian Children's Fund
Church World Service
Concern Worldwide
Direct Relief International
Doctors Without Borders
Food for the Hungry, Inc.
International Aid
International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies
International Medical Corps
International Rescue Committee
Islamic Relief Worldwide
Lutheran World Relief
MAP International
Mercy Corps
Network for Good
Operation Blessing International
Operation USA
Oxfam America
Plan USA
Project Concern International
Salvation Army
Save the Children USA
UNICEF
U.N. World Food Programme
USAID
World Concern
World Relief
World Vision

New Years Eve
Whether it is the radio or the television or the newspaper it is hard to get away from a yearly retrospective today. Everyone has their own list of the best and worst of the year. Who is the most popular figure—or least, what the best album was—or worst, which movie exceeded all other and which was the dud.

For the most part though, it really is not a day of doing the introspective work. There does not seem to be energy to question beyond where we, as a people, did well, and consider questioning where we could have done better, and where we wish we had not acted at all. This type of work would require us to ask questions we would rather leave unasked. So, instead, we only work the issues that do not leave anyone feeling unpleasant or depressed. Society seems to say that the week after Christmas needs to be savored for its pleasure, so let’s keep it on the upside.

The writer of the gospel of Matthew would have us question this outlook. The birth of the Messiah does not bring a life of contentment to either the parents or society. A few wise men show up, listen to what Herod has to say, and after a quick hello, get the heck out of Dodge! Joseph, being no slouch himself, fully understands what it means to see the bottom of the feet of the wise guys as they run off, and gathers up Mary and the baby and the three of them take off for Egypt ! It is the poor folks who are left behind and who have no idea what is occurring around them, who have it the worse. For they are the ones who have to endure the wrath of Herod when he recognized that “he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old and under” vv2:16. “All the children,” died because the wise men (or astrologers according to some texts) never considered gender a determining factor for the messiah, asked “where is the child...?” vv2:2 and perhaps did not question what their words could lead to. All in all, Matthew may question why the power structure (the media?, the politicians?, ourselves?) bypass the hard questions in favor of, who is the most popular, whose song was better than another’s, or what movie made the most money.

A few questions…

Why would U.N. Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland characterize relief funds given by the United States towards the tragedy, in Indonesia , as stingy? Is there cause? Are we too quick to defend ourselves? In addition to giving money is there more to be done?

Over 100,000 Iraqis have now died because of the war. Eighty percent are non-combatants. In hindsight, what does it mean to have a pre-emptive war that was to save “our” lives, take the lives of some eighty thousand innocent children, women, elderly, and disabled?

A bill passed by congress this year will “enable NASA to send a servicing robot to save the Hubble Space Telescope.” This will, in turn, according to Sen. Barbara Mikulski (Baltimore) will lead to, elderly housing experiencing a $26 million cut, housing for the disable dropping by $10 million, the EPA experiencing a reduction of $300 million, and a cut back for the Community Development Block Grant program of $200 million. What will happen to basic life support in our communities of poverty? Where will those who rely on community housing go? How do the homeless do with less? Where do the disabled, those with AIDS, and the elderly turn too? What happens next winter when there is a reduction in funding for Indian housing? Who will survive? Just whom was this bill for?

A few answers…

Maybe with the first of the year we can come up with a few. And perhaps we can participate in a year where unlike the year of the wise men, no one is left behind.

Christmas Eve 2004
Cooking fills the early morning hours, both at the Mission and in families’ homes. Anticipation is high, in all quarters, as food fills platters and plastic wrap prepares them for a journey. Wood is gathered and taken out back and stacked for a fire. Before noon , there is a strike of a match, the fire starts, and the first car arrives and the Christmas Eve service begins.

Car after car and the transfer of food moves between building and house. Many who arrive were not raised in a Disciples church with the monthly potluck, but each one innately understands the wonderful companionship around food that is about to take place. Youth and young adults alike hang around the fire and catch up on what has occurred in their lives since their last meeting. For some, it has been months because of their time away at college. For many, it has been five days since Christmas break began and it seems like forever!

Slowly, people move towards the indoors. Food hits the plates (and the floor) as hymns are selected and played (tell me again, one more time, just who is Avril Lavigne and Seals?) Then the talking really begins. Who knew that youth and adults could hang with one another for hours on end and talk about school, the war, pro-choice and pro-life, racism, and laugh and eat all at the same time?

The youth play darts and vigorous games of table hockey, and the young adults settle into talking about their lives in college. For all, except one, they are the first of their family to attempt college. A few live at home while others have now spent a quarter away. They talk about being in colleges and universities where the school’s population is larger than that of their hometown (and in some cases the population of a single class!) There is talk about how surprised they are that most of their peers have little contact with people back home. While they receive emails from family, friends who have gone to other schools and folks at the Mission , their roommates are lucky to hear from family. Some note how they enjoy contact from adults who were once apart of their life. This led to conversation of how different our communities and churches could be if people kept in touch with their students. (For us on staff at the Mission this was a bit of a wakeup call. While we thought we were doing a good job keeping in touch, obviously we were not. Contact in the midst of life change is much more important than we thought. As we talked, later, we had to wonder if it would make a difference in future life of our congregations if when our young adults went off to college a mentor from the church made weekly contact? Would our young adults feel events such as baptism, into the community, is more than an event, but a way of life? We agreed that these thoughts and observations needed to be revisited in the next week.)

As the afternoon lingers there is movement to the fire outside. Marshmallows find their way to the end of sticks and as they slowly brown (or flame) the SMORE is anticipated. The tenor of conversation changes and moments of silence slide in during the pondering of coals (and silence is helpful while trying to get stuck marshmallow off the face with some dignity!) Questions and comments that can only occur after an extended time together, crop up. Replies give hope, peace, and joy to one and all, by one and all.

The sun nears on the ridge and the temperature drops ten degrees in thirty minutes. Goodbyes and hugs are exchanged, with promises to keep in touch. As cars head down the drive with hands flailing out windows waving as if there is no tomorrow: The Christmas Eve service ends.

12.14.04
People in the office moved around in a mesmerized state. Adults and youth alike would arrive; sit in front of their computers, and stare, as if an eighteen-inch alien were performing stupid dog tricks before their eyes. The incident came to be known as the sitz en starezen, (the loss of internet and trying to maintain life outside the WEB) syndrome. Long forgotten questions began to rise to the surface. Can daily life really begin without a warm cup of coffee and email? Is it possible to maintain a stable thought process without caffeine and instant connection to the outside world! Where is the motivation? Life without a cyber fix is like eating smore’s without the chocolate, the jaw is moving but the taste buds are revolting and the pleasure portion of the mind is on vacation. Even worse, how does one move on to task two when task one is still floating somewhere out there behind that flickering screen?

The first week was a struggle “to move on” through the lost. First is that insane thought that there must be some way to reach through the screen and pull the emails from that other dimension of cyberspace into the world of plastic and synthetic fiber, but then resignation sets in. In time, one moves on to other tasks, but now and again, there is a longing stare over the shoulder towards the computer. Hoping beyond hope the machine has miraculously fixed itself and the comforting colors and shapes of Yahoo or Google or just maybe the Missions Website (but that may be just a little to appropriate!) would burst forth over the screens landscape!

Oh, but it was not to be. The first week oozed by one faltering day a time. During the second week, a fog of false acceptance engulfed the office as people moved about in a lethargic state that rolled in with the loss of signal. Survival of the second week only occurred through shear determination as everyone made their way through the murkiness of communication loss. By the beginning of the third week, resignation settled in and communication, of sorts, was reestablished as youth and adults talk about school, Monday night football, and the weather! Then with just a hint of wonder, the fourth week began when from the depths of purgatory (otherwise known as the storage closet) there was a resurrection of the old FAX machine!

Then one day, from out of nowhere, the savior of internet access arrived in a brown van…who knew? Cables flew as they were unhooked, and boxes full of wires and other miraculous items were moved, set aside, and installed. A flurry of action as everyone watched so intensely that no one thought of picking up the bubblewrap and popping it behind the backs of the installers. Finally, the time had arrived! The last cables were attached, the lines to the computers were reconnected, and the system plugged in—it was time to turn it on—and the apprehension could be cut with a CD disk…

Life is better today. Certainly, we learned a few things from our time away from the World Wide Web. But all in all, we are products of our generation, and today we smile contently as we set down in the morning with our cup of coffee, turn on the monitor, and begin our daily medication of cyberspace.

10.31.04
First frost, first freeze, first snow on the ridges, a shift in weather occurred in the lower Yakima Valley this week. A search through the closet brings out coats, gloves, hats, and the remembrance of winters past. Conversations bring up good memories such as the finding an inch of ice on the water trough for the first time as a child. For many, other memories also well up of waiting for buses while the wind blew through light jackets and small firewood stacks in the late fall.

Gifts come to the Mission in many ways. Some of these gifts arrive in the form of jackets, gloves, and hats. How does one speak about the need for these items? The next time you walk into a clothing store to buy, say, socks or jacket, think about what this would mean to my family and myself if our combined income were $10,000 per year. These gifts given by individuals and congregations across the US are invaluable! They make a short-term difference in peoples lives—people are able to work, go to school, to enjoy the outdoors, and for a few, survive.

This is not a call for clothes. If a need arises this winter which is greater than in the past, we will let you know! This is to acknowledge, though, the many congregations and individuals who have made clothing to the Mission their mission. This has resulted in the Mission entering the late Fall with full closets! Thanks!

10.22.04
The poor, the widow, and the alien-Samaritan-leper-hemorrhaging woman-Lazarus and his sores, and the story continues…

Stories gather around these words and phrases bringing to life the soul of existence for those who follow the paths of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. Stories spanning experiences of hurt and heartache to those of triumph and delight have awakened people since an ancient day to the option for, the realm of God. Glimmers of this option break through the crust of power, comfort, and wealth when people remember their ancestors who lived and suffered beneath a similar authority of oppression.

A question: Is the moment at hand, when people, whose forbearers were the poor, the widow, and the alien, will break through the crust of contentment and find themselves in mutual relationship with those today whose story is living the lives of the poor, the widow, and the alien?

Advocacy, a word of hope called forth from words of repression-Samaritan, leper, hemorrhaging woman-carries an untold strength when aligned with the oppressed and the realm of God. When one is mindful of their power and strength, and channel their influence in preference for those whose survival is a daily struggle, glimmers of light break through the crust of satisfaction. Advocacy is a powerful word and an even greater powerful act.

The opportunity to act is near. Vote: An act when coupled with remembering the stories of ancestral oppression and advocacy leads to a structure of life where those who have and those who have-not recognize one another as family. Voting emboldens an ancient light when those with societal power opt for society’s powerless.

A question: What would it mean to the realm of God if those who have the power to vote enter the polling booth and no longer ask themselves, "how will this legislation or this politician affect my children or myself," and instead ask, "how will this legislation or this politician affect the poor of the inner cities, such as San Antonio or Los Angeles, and the poor of rural areas, such as White Swan or the Appalachians?"

It may mean, when one votes in preference for the oppressed, it is a vote for the betterment of their children and themselves. For then the thickening societal crust of power, comfort, and wealth, no longer thickens, but begins to erode because people, from every background, every race, and every culture begin to live into mutual relationship.

10.15.04
A couple ewes, a ram, and two goats arrived in the early evening. They had left Caldwell, Idaho that morning. After hours of traveling, across the blue mountains of Oregon, over the wide Columbia river, and up the Yakima river valley, animals and humans arrive a bit tired, but no worse for wear. Just the same, all bodies are ready to leave the confines of their traveling metal boxes. Animals step upon ground that no longer moves and there seems to be, just a hint, of relief. Humans speak clearly though, the drive was beautiful, wonderful time together, yet, nice to be at the end of the drive.

Jan and Jim worked tirelessly during the last few weeks to arrange the collection and arrival of the sheep and goats. Thanks to their efforts, the Mission now has a small herd of goats and sheep uniquely suited to our region!

The sheep are Polypay. The Polypay are a breed known for both their wool and their meat. They are white from head to hoof, with wool that flows from the back, up and over the neck, around the ears, and stops short of their eyes and jaws. Leaving eyes, mouth and a naturally trimmed sloping nose able to graze pastures. Both carry a personality of wariness, consequentially, trust is a slow movement forward between the sheep and these newly adopted humans.

The goats are 7/8’s Boer. The Boer goat is known for both their meat and fast weight gain. Mixed with an 1/8 milking goat, these goats have both great meat and milk production. Color abounds with these two goats, one black and the other a field of white spotted here and there with brown. Unlike the sheep, their curiosity brings them forward to nipple the seams of your pants.

And so, a thanks to Jim and Jan Piper for putting this all together to bring the first donated animals to the Mission (and thanks for the Polypays from their own herd!). Also, we thank Nathan and Shalom Hammond for donating these two great goats that are already making a name for themselves!

One last thing…if you are in the area on Saturday October 30 th, a great event is occurring! Campbell Farms, a sister Presbyterian Mission on the reservation is having their Fall event! This is a time of music, storytelling, food, and hayrides. There will be opportunities to experience sustainable farming (they have forty acres of apple trees!), water management, and organic building practices. Take a look at their proposed expansion plans and notice how they propose to use straw and other renewable resources in their construction plans. Come on in you will have a great time! If you need a place to stay, call us and we will set you up for the night!

10.08.04
A still fall morning with blended orange-blue colors that occur before the sun really gets serious about breaking the horizon. Leaves on the trees lie still as if they are thinking about a new season and if it is time to enter into the fall of their lives. The fall of life when everyday green leaves begin to intensify into reds, yellows, and oranges as if they have the ability to suck the color out of the morning sunrise and claim it for themselves.

And for a moment you wonder, will the leaves claim this morning’s sunrise?

10.01.04
Three years ago, at two in the morning, after opening his door to help whomever had knocked, two young men tied-up seventyfive-year-old Father Shaw, duct taped his mouth and robbed him, at gunpoint. Two years ago, at three in the morning, Pastor Jane awakened to incessant barking and nudging from her dogs. Her house had been set on fire by a local youth and flames were waving outside her second floor window. By six in the morning the building was gutted.

Since mid-August, the Log Church has been broken into three times and the Friendship house once. During the break-in of the Friendship house (which also incorporates the mission pastors residence) youth lighted fires in the office.

Situations like these call out for a dialogue of root cause, both locally and globally. But this moment is not the time. Instead, an update to what has been happening to work on the primary surface issue, safety.

Clearly, there has been a need to have a residence for the mission pastor, which is safe and secure. Just as clearly, financial constraints make it impossible for the Mission to develop a new residence at this moment. Enter grace.

Last year the Yakama Mission partnered with Vision Builders Construction, Division of Home Missions, Church Extension, and the people of the United Christian Church of Yakima to build a new home of worship for the United Christian Church of Yakima. This radical collaboration allowed the United Christian Church of Yakima to contribute tens of thousands of dollars to another church building in Kinston, North Carolina.

Well, when the United Christian Church of Yakima heard about the Mission’s situation they came forward with an offer. This offer would allow the mission pastor to stay in a farmhouse located near the church—at no rent. So, for the last week Estavan, Elias, Angel, Katherine, and David have been working on the building, after school, to prepare it for the move-in. They have moved doors, painted walls and ceilings, hung drywall, installed a new bathtub, and moved sinks. By Monday, the residence should be ready to become a home .

Grace happens when people come together to care for one another. In the space of relationship God is present and work that otherwise is a dream becomes reality. Grace occurred this week when a congregation, youth, and Mission became one.

9.25.04
The other day, a few visitors visited the Mission. During our time together, someone made the comment, “I have a light for Christ burning in my heart.” Now tell me, what in the world does that mean?

Roberto, Luis, and Jesus started college this week. For one this is his second year of college while it is the first year for the other two. A few years ago, none of them thought college as a part of their future. Their parent’s education stopped at fourth grade and their brothers and sisters education ended after finishing twelfth grade. Had it not been for two people telling them college is possible, it is doubtful they would have considered college a possibility.

Instead, due to Debbie and Lloyd’s encouragement, Sunday was the last day in the hop fields (at least for this season) for Luis and Monday he walked onto a college campus. Jesus, though, was up at 4am to pick apples with his father. Then after four hours in the orchards was off to college. While Roberto, Luis, and Jesus will work afternoons after they get out of college, Jesus must put in the extra time. Since Jesus is not a naturalized citizen, though he has lived in the States since he was a one-year-old, he does not have access to the same funding streams as the other two. This has resulted in his need to work many more hours than Roberto and Luis to earn the needed funds for college. This means that for all of Debbie and Lloyd’s work, Jesus’ opportunity to finish college will always be in jeopardy until the day he graduates.

There are arguments saying society will be better off if we use our resources in such a way that everyone has access to an education. Such as, if all people have access to post high school education such as college or trade schools, they will enter into the market place with greater marketable skills, leading to their ability to make more money, and therefore pay more taxes than they would in a low paying/low education position—thus, funding the educational system in the future. This argument is not a lot different from those made by our grand and great-grandparents when they supported public education through the twelfth grade. Yet, is this even a reason to support fully funded education for all of our children?

The Campbell Seminar at Columbia Theological Seminary raised an abiding question giving one a reason to pause. If the church is to have relevance in a modern context, “it begins at the point where human beings who feel themselves beckoned to follow the Christ realize in their hearts that the times of culture-Christianity—Christianity based on inheritance and convention—are over, that from now on all who follow the Way must be prepared to give a reason for the hope that is in them.” These words should lead us, who understand ourselves as Christian, to ponder what is means to “give a reason for the hope” within us. My perspective leads me to hear this as a response of missional action combining voice and deed. Can this lead to less comfort in our lives, or to questioning how we use our power and our resources, or maybe even suffering? Perhaps.

Today we may consider, that for a time, it may be best to give phrases like, “I have a light for Christ burning in my heart,” a sabbatical. It isn’t that the phrase does not hold great significance to many, but it may be time to put a little “meat on these bones.” For phrases such as this have a tendency to allow people to reside in comfort and not become the Debbie’s and Lloyd’s of this world who enter bodily, financially, and spiritually into a community of poverty, abuse, and oppression.

“I have a light for Christ burning in my heart,” in a modern context of global suffering, calls for the speaker to be “prepared to give a reason for the hope that is in them.” Hope through standing and speaking at city council meetings in favor of the oppressed. Hope by risking our image to our neighbors by standing on the street corner and protesting for the disenfranchised. Hope boiling up from working in the food banks and soup kitchens, building houses for the low income, and doing the work that needs to be done so that all who want an education, receive it.

It is then, when the world knows us for our commitment to Christ’s realm of radical compassion and care, that the phrases like, “I have a light for Christ burning in my heart” will again convey the hope intended.

9.02.04
It’s not much, the nip in the air. September first arrives and the early morning coolness is the creamer to the warm day’s coffee. With the nip comes new sights and sounds than those of just a week ago.

The early morning sunrise is punctuated by the sounds of shotguns around the valley with the opening of dove season. Those echo’s arrive over the hum of the tractors who enter hop fields at daylight to begin this years hop harvest (Fear not, you beer drinkers, the dark green hop vines are full of the hanging fluorescent green hop tassels.) and others who have just begun digging potatoes. Just as the sun crests the eastern horizon the low whine of a diesel engine mixed with the rough noise of rubber rolling across a chip-sealed road adds to the conversation as a school bus begins a new year of mixing the excited, and some not so excited, sounds of children and teachers.

A week has come and gone and it seems as if the world changed while we were not looking.

August 27, 2004
Hoops. No, not those round quarter inch steel bands bolted to steel backboards which are welded to steel uprights with netting drooping from its circular edges like so much moss hanging from a shady tree in the late of winter. Rather, these are light as air calling for attention as their colors—red, green, yellow, blue, purple—move through space. Not black holes sucking in all aspects of light and life, but open space spewing forth energy and buoyant illumination.

The Summer Fun Program of 2004 has now ended. In its wake both laughter and tears have been added to the creative work of God, which God will hold lightly for our eternal remembrance. Tears created from a name calling or a slam at the bottom of the slide when one did not move fast enough after their rush to the bottom. Tears dropped from dropping a snow cone on the ground or from the crack that appeared the next day in the middle of one’s clay art. The laughter rises one moment, from two who tangle at the bottom of the slide and another from mouth gymnastics trying to say a new Michoacan name. The laughter gushes forth from a relay race with buckets of water and the painting of a new mural in the basement. Like the hula-hoop, tears and laughter are not an either/or thing, they just have their being in the circle of life in which one has little meaning without the other.

Another summer of programming events for life participation reminds us that we are all in this together. There are times when we find ourselves feeling as if we are at the outer edges of the hoop barely hanging on. Then we find ourselves well balanced with the wind in our face loving the smooth ride found in the midst of the hoop. When we are lucky, though, we have a moment when we can look beyond the hoop towards the center to the one who’s swinging us around by the hip…and we smile, for the creator of the ride looks a lot like a little smiling girl.

July 12, 2004
The community is afraid. Perhaps worried, or frightened, or scared, or terrified may be a better word to describe the community today. Homeland Security is in town and no one feels very secure. The division of Homeland Security that used to be the INS are in the community, surprising people in the grocery store, the clothing store, at the fairgrounds on the Fourth of July, stopping cars with more than two people who, in each case, look as if they might be Mexican. Then for a myriad of reasons, the least of not having the appropriate papers, our government takes these people into custody.

I think it is hard for most of us to imagine what this feels like and what it would mean to our families. Most of us no longer remember our original entry into the country. We have all too often forgotten what it meant to be called the drunken Irish or the dumb Pollock, and we have forgotten the struggle to arrive in the U.S. , so our family may simply live without fear of starvation and oppression. Yet, I think, if we take a moment to remember, we can understand the horrendous actions taking place in the community of White Swan.

Parents now give an extra kiss to their children in the morning, because they know children whose parents never returned home from work, or shopping, or the park. The people are terrified that as they leave for work they will not see their children that evening. And children worry they will not see their parents. An interesting turn of events for a division of the government developed to keep terrorists at bay, who is now terrifying thousands of people who are struggling to survive just as our ancestors did before us.

Sounds a little political? Well, I imagine so. The thing is, though, I feel I read an ancient—and not so ancient—text each week that reminds the people—us—that the core to understanding God is to understand we are called to care for those who hurt and stamp out suffering at every opportunity. Political? Perhaps so, but as I watch people crying for friends who are gone or for those who have been picked up, or for those who live in fear, I have to say, let us be political, write and call all who will listen, and stop the insane abuse to the people whose only concern is to raise their families and provide the rest of us—life—by picking our food.