One Year at Hope House

We lose track of our humble beginnings at our homeless ministry, Hope House. I think that one of the reasons why it is so difficult to track our birthday is that we were always doing things as soon as we could. We didn't wait to have a grand opening when everything was finished. We housed our first homeless man, not because we had one room completed and ready to be inhabited, but because we had a man leaving a program that would have returned to his storage unit if we had not offered him the room. The rehabilitation of the Hope House buildings took months and could only be tracked by payments for supplies and labor.

But today turns out to be an easy opportunity for an anniversary. For today is the first anniversary of The Book of Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Radicals. One year ago today, November 30, 2010, was the release party of this book of liturgical prayer. I had actually signed up to host a release party at the Hope House location before I owned it. Talk about living into your reality. I knew that those hosting release parties would get free copies of the book, and I wanted to make this prayer resource available to homeless men in a program across town. The first event at Hope House was this release party. By the time of the party I had discovered that I was in way over my head in terms of my ability to provide a competent liturgical showing, with music and songs that were part of other release parties. As a result I invited only a handful of people, and a few showed up. It was certainly an opportunity to show people the book, and a new way to think about prayer, but it turned out to be an excellent first showing of Hope House. With walls freshly painted and a newly donated table just moved into the dining room, sans chairs, Hope House was, on the inside at least, like a shiny new penny.

So we celebrate this season of anniversary for Hope House remembering that this is the season that we began providing housing to our first homeless man, when we first opened the house to visitors, and soon, (probably this coming weekend) the first anniversary of a Hope House outreach morning. Happy one year anniversary to Hope House!

Waiting with Mary

Having grown up a Baptist boy in Louisiana, I don't come from a faith tradition that has any sort of Mariology. In fact, we didn't quite know what to do with her. She was a passive figure in the manger scene, looking lovingly down at baby Jesus. She was receptive, the object of the Holy Spirit's affection. Not much was said about her. Of course, this was the South of the 1970s, pre-women's movement in the world dominated by men, in a denomination restrictive in the roles of women. I find that the Gospel writers didn't make a big fuss about her, and it is noted that Judaism of 2000 years ago did not place women on a pedestal either. But very early on in Christianity, we became reflective about who Jesus was, and what the reality of those implications were. As always, these reflections upon the divinity and humanity of Jesus are deepest in the face of heresy. As the church deepened its understanding of who Jesus was as his divinity was challenged, they quickly understood that Mary had given birth to God. Again, as Jesus' physical life came into question from heresy, the church's clarification of who Jesus was gave clarity to the role of Mary, Theotokos. Indeed, references to Mary as God bearer, or Theotokos occur in late first century Christianity. So from our earliest opportunity for reflection upon who Mary was, during the same time period as the Gospel of John was written, she has had a special place in Christendom. Today, 30 years removed from my childhood experiences, I find most, if not all, of the Protestant world has a greater appreciation of Mary and of women. As a Catholic, I am 35 years behind on appreciating Mary, but I'm working on it.

The Advent season is upon us, and we are invited to be reflective for the next few weeks as we prepare our hearts, souls and minds for the arrival of Jesus. The King is coming; he is to be laid in a manger. It is a good reflection to remember that the first person to wait for Jesus was Mary. My mind has been trained to see her in a white dress and a blue mantle, and that's okay. My vision of her waiting for the joyous arrival of her unborn son is of a woman 18, maybe 20 years old, a few years older than she actually was. In my mind's eye she rubs her belly with anticipation for she knows that soon, perhaps in a few weeks when they are in Bethlehem, Jesus will be coming. Like every good mother, he will mean everything to her and she will place him at the center of her attention and her life. She will birth him, nurse him, and nurture him. She will watch with pride as he grows, wonder and amazement at his ministry, and horror at his death. When the Holy Spirit comes upon the disciples at the dawn of the church, she is there.

But now, in this Advent season, she is waiting with anticipation for the arrival of Jesus. She is making preparations. I think she would have made preparations in her home for his arrival. Perhaps a nursery or a special place for Jesus to sleep. This is our call in the Advent season, to prepare a place for Jesus. So let's spend the next several weeks preparing ourselves for the arrival of our King. Happy Advent everyone.

Proposition 26

Next week the good citizens of Mississippi will vote on Proposition 26. It will prove to be an interesting day. You see, Mississippi is vehemently pro-life, or so we say. And I do say "we," because I am immersed in Mississippi culture and do take some ownership in it. So the comments I make today are not intended to be comments about what "they" do, but a reflection upon who we say we are and who we might be.

As I have said previously, we are a strange people. We like killing. We may not like the idea that we like killing, but we do. We don't like killing just for the sake of killing, we prefer for there to be some good reason. I suppose many of us were raised watching good Westerns where the bad guys killed wrongfully and were punished, but the good guys make good decisions about who to kill and when to kill them, and so were rewarded for their gallant behavior. This idea of a "good killing" is very important in American society and very important in Mississippi culture. We do not mind a bad guy being killed especially if he happens to be threatening someone else. We do not mind killing a foreign enemy, it is what insulates our bubble of safety, or so we believe. So this is the first important point to understand about our culture when we are talking about issues of life, is that there are lots of times when taking a life is something we find justifiable although we never talk about ourselves is a violent culture.

America has been violent from its earliest days and I suspect will always retain its violent nature. I also suspect that America will exist as long as it is financially viable, because I truly believe we are just too violent to be overtaken. This violence runs through our culture. We love guns. We love owning guns, buying guns, shooting guns, and having our guns in their hidden places. This doesn't mean we are bad people, just that we have a touch of violence in our blood. And as I have mentioned previously, we come by it honestly.

We like the death penalty here in Mississippi. We think that there are certain crimes that warrants a sentence of death. I don't think we really believe that the death penalty is a deterrent to crime, I think we like to kill bad people who have been found to deserve death. In this,we find a sense of justice. That a man, or a woman, would have a chance to be judged and be treated fairly and justly according to their crime. There is just one problem about the death penalty. It takes human life. We know that Mississippians are pro-life. We know that it is not possible to lose the image of God bestowed upon us at conception, that we are made in the image of God, and that for this reason we should not take human life. I have always imagined that we would never be able to rid ourselves of abortion here in Mississippi as long as we have the death penalty. To me, these two issues speak of the same image of God dynamic of human existence. Indeed, people often think that those on death row are no longer fully human or have full human rights. This is exactly the problem the unborn deals with, they have no voice, no visible face to be seen on TV, robbed of their ability to scream, many are not sure they're even human.

Here in Mississippi we are predominantly pro-life, and it is being asked of us to vote for an amendment that matches our belief statement. When I reflect on proposition 26, I ask myself, how does one vote against a statement that supposedly matches one's beliefs? Yet, that is exactly what many Mississippians will ask themselves next week. It is not because we are not pro-life we say, but that the proposition is too ambiguous and leaves too many unknown consequences before us. I wonder if we are terrified that there is no one left to protect us from ourselves, and now that we have been given authority to create law that matches what we say we believe, we may legislate ourselves back into the 19th century. This, of course, is a pro-choice argument, which we say we are not. But I think the state is full of women who are frightened of losing their right of making private decisions about their reproductive healthcare. I think this is what the opponents of proposition 26 mean when they say it is too ambiguous. Without directly addressing abortion, the consequences are far extended beyond the comfort level of many here in our state. Without the ability to create a law directly denying access to abortion, I am not sure what else the good citizens of the state might have done, except wait their lives away for a federal amendment. I think our state understands for the most part what an ugly business of killing an abortion clinic is, and that abortion clinics are not exactly healthcare. We are reminded of this when the occasional story comes out of a late-term abortion clinic about a baby being born alive in a bathroom stall or other setting, and no one at the clinic knowing quite what to do with it. Such things are really too horrible speak of. It is not enough to say, "no one really wants abortions" and ignore the massive financial machine that the abortion industry is. But the story of "following the money" is another story altogether when it comes to the heirs of the American eugenics movement, Planned Parenthood. I'll save that one for another day.

I am wondering if we will discover next week that we are a state made up of closet pro-choice believers who are desperate not to lose our birth control or any other control of our reproductive healthcare. Yet, we all seem to know that proposition 26 could take us to this place, where basic reproductive health care interfaces with an ambiguous amendment. We may discover that we are a state of pro-lifers who want to retain the choice to be pro-life and not have it legislated upon them. We shall see.

The Catholic Church teaches that nothing overrides the human conscience and that we must use our conscience to make good decisions. Church teaching informs conscience, but we are not to follow church teachings like robots. I have noticed that the church frowns upon people making informed decisions that may stray from church teachings, so I haven't quite worked out all the details about the relationship between church teachings and conscience. True to form, the Bishop in Jackson is reminding Catholics that they are, as always, to vote their conscience. He has also said that although the diocese there does not oppose proposition 26, but they are not developing the habit of supporting everything that dresses itself in pro-life clothing. So again, it is up to the individual voter who, with a properly formed conscience, will decide next week if the Mississippi "personhood" rights begin at fertilization, or equivalent thereof.

So, for those in Mississippi, vote your conscience. Do not be afraid. Surely a state that does not match federal Medicaid dollars currently wouldn't do anything that would actually increase the number of children born here, and must see that they have some vested financial interest in making sure that the good citizens of Mississippi who choose to use birth control will not lose their access to it. Again, we shall see. May God lead us on the right path.