Diapers for Baby Jesus

In my last year of seminary I took a two quarter course at the Franciscan School in Berkeley, California, called "Church and Sacraments." This was a basic class for Roman Catholic students preparing for the priesthood. I took it to fill in a gap in my education in the realm of what used to be called "pastoral theology." That is a course on thinking theologically about the everyday activities of a local church. Up to that time I had taken wonderful courses in Systematic Theology, with an emphasis on Process Theology. I enjoyed the class.

When we were talking about Eucharist, or Communion, one of the Roman Catholic students remarked about preparing children for First Communion. "I have no trouble convincing them that it (little white wafer) is the body of Christ," he remarked. "I do have trouble convincing them that it is bread." This remark has stuck with me. In an adult world we may have difficulty in the theological interpretation of things while in a child's world this is not the issue.

I have taken this as a guide to emphasize the human qualities of baby Jesus as we talk about Christmas in the church. Diapers for Baby Jesus is a way to emphasize the incarnation in a concrete way.

One way we do this at the Church of Peace is by collecting disposable diapers for low income persons from our neighborhood who come to the church seeking emergency assistance. We have a food pantry. We know that disposable diapers are often an expensive item, and we keep a supply of the various sizes around to tide a family over. We have fun talking about the "bottom line," as we seek donations. We can collect almost enough diapers at Christmas to have a supply on hand for the whole year long.

We ask that families and children bring packages of disposable diapers for baby Jesus and place them under the Christmas trees in the front of the sanctuary. This year, in addition to collecting diapers we also collected cel phones for Abused Women, buckets and mops for refugee families, new children's books for the Book Nook at our neighborhood school, and personal items for seniors in a local nursing home. We get a pretty strong dose of the incarnation and the needs of the poor and often forgotten.

What I find marvelous is the great collection of trees, poinsettias, candles, diapers, buckets, mops, Mary, Joseph, lamb, angels, Jesus, children's books and cel phones that festoon the chancel area of the sanctuary. I think it makes a strong positive statement about the nature of our faith and spirituality.

Christmas Eve

Well, Merry Christmas everyone! This is our home this morning as I left to deal with last minute details at church as we prepare for our two Christmas Eve Services. We have had snow and ice on the ground for some time, and today we were getting a new topping of fresh soft snow. I am especially thinking of the California members of our family as I post this. You fortunate ones.

Taylor drove home from Minnesota on Monday evening. She had planned to come on Tuesday, but the forecast was that there would be severe weather. She made a good choice.

Becca came home from Cornell College last Friday. She has completed her classes for the first semester.

Nancy is off for two weeks, now that she works on a school based schedule again. This is great for everyone.

We are happy and blessed and pleased to be together again.

Hold Sacred God's Good Earth

The mission statement of the Church of Peace includes the goal that we will "hold sacred the good earth" which guides the members and staff to do what we can to be environmentally conscious.

With a church building which is in parts almost 100 years old this is sometimes a challenge. Here are some things we have done:
+ we have added a great deal of insulation, especially above the dome of the church sanctuary. (We were here motivated by our utility bill as well as our mission statement.)
+ we have replaced most of the steel framed windows with modern double paned windows that hold in more heat and cooling.
+ we use paper with recycled content for our church documents.
+ we recycle used paper products.
+ we participate in the Rock Island curb-side recycle program, which helps us and helps the city too.
+ we recycle aluminum cans. For many years we had a church member who would take the cans and sell them to gain money for the church. Recently that member has been unable to do that task so we have another member, Mr. Norris, who recycles for us. Mr. Norris is a model of going green - he rides a bike at all times of the year rather than drive a car. Here he is with a bag of cans he is recycling.

Our church is enriched by having many people each doing a small part to help us accomplish our part of God's mission in the world.

Guadalupe Day - December 12

My mother was born on December 12, and when I realized that mom's birthday was the same day as Our Lady of Guadalupe Day in Mexico and around the world, I have been able to remember Guadalupe Day.

Our Lady of Guadalupe is a darker-skinned image of the Virgin Mary who is reported to have appeared to an Aztec peasant, Juan Diego, in 1531, on December 12. She spoke to him in his own indigenous language, Nahuatl. Her image is said to have appeared miraculously on his tilma, or cloak. And that garment is hung behind bullet proof glass in a basilica built near the spot where she spoke to Juan Diego. This spot is some six miles from the very downtown of Mexico City. The photo above is one I snapped inside the basilica.


In 1810 a banner with the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe was carried by revolutionary hero Miguel Hidalgo, as he and his followers fought for independence from Colonial Spain.


In many Guadalupe has become a symbol for the mixed race Mestizos in Mexico, and for the indigenous, as over against the European born Spanish. With her darker skin she is sometimes known as La Morenita, the little brown one. For the pure bloods the patroness of Mexico City was Our Lady of Remedies; for the others the patroness for the Americas is Our Lady of Guadalupe.


If there is a Catholic Church in an American city where recent immigrants from Mexico worship, it is probably named Our Lady of Guadalupe. I think that it is important to know a little bit about the tradition of this image of the Virgin Mary as we want to know more about our neighbors who trace their ancestry to Mexico.

Skeptics point out that the spot where she appeared to Juan Diego, and asked him to build a church is about the same place where the Aztec goddess Tonantzin, Mother God, was venerated.

Here is our family at the new (1975) Basilica, where we visited in July 2006. Just over my head is the rostrum where Pope John Paul II celebrated mass for the assembled crowds when he visited the site. In the background are some golden words on a dark brown background, which are those spoken to Juan Diego by the Virgin Mary, "Am I not your mother?"

Many have read this to mean that the indigenous peoples of the Americas were recognized as worthy of respect, having human dignity, and dear to God. That is not a bad reminder for us, even today.

Echo Organ Chamber

Back on October 27 there was a blog about the Anniversary Sunday of the Church of Peace and the dedication of the rebuilt echo organ. Here are two photos of the echo organ chamber, empty, while the rebuilding was being done.

This first photo is of our music director and organist, Mary Kae Waytenick inside the echo organ chamber. The pink wall behind her is the west wall of the back of the sanctuary. This wall, facing west, gets lots of heat in the late in the afternoon, especially in summer. The company which rebuilt the organ suggested that we put insulation on that wall to moderate the temperature variations in the room. So the pink material is Styrofoam, which should help do the job.

Aaron Waytenick was the person who repainted the interior of the chamber and installed the insulation on the west wall in preparation for the installation of the rebuilt organ.


This second photo is looking east, through the louvers which by opening make the sound louder, and by closing make the sound softer. This is looking into the sanctuary area and the curved contours behind the louvers are the filigreed arches above the chancel.

If you look back at the photo of the interior of the sanctuary published on September 22 the arches are clearly visible. If the arches were the top of a clock, this area would be between 9 and 10 o'clock.

Maybe in a few weeks there will also be some photos of this chamber filled with boxes and organ pipes.

Broken Glass

The break-ins that took place late this summer is a gift that just keeps giving. We have finally finished up with all the window repairs that needed to take place to remediate the damage that

was done. We needed some special kinds of glass because we are a public facility and the glass was in many cases in office doors. That is a good thing: it helps make our church safer with an "open door" counseling committment. However, doors also require special tempered glass to be safe. Such glass breaks into little pebbles of glass rather than saber sharp shards of glass.

Some of our new best friends are the fellows at Rock Island Glass Company. They were prompt in helping secure the building and ordered and installed the glass we needed. The made the critical repairs immediately and some of the less critical ones they did over a period of time. We were grateful for their good work. I think the final outcome was sixteen panes of glass and over $2000 in expense. The amount of glass damage was almost as much as the value of the stolen articles.

(Of course, there was also the expense of the professional clean up when toner from the copy machine was thrown around the office, and also the hours and hours of work lost when the computers were taken.)

It is sometimes difficult to keep a positive attitude when I think about the damage done and the ego-centric attitude that a person must have to attack the house of God and do damage to door after door to steal things for personal gain. This is a living out of the attitude that its-all-about-me.

What we really need now is a patient painter and repair person to touch up the trim and paint on the doors that have had panes of glass replaced. Are you that person? Let me know.

Frauen Verein Window

About ten years ago the church was doing some significant renovation in the sanctuary. The Bell Choir requested that the seating and riser be removed from the balcony so that they could both rehearse and play their music in worship from that location. When the seating was removed from the balcony it revealed a whole of the rosette window. Only the top portion had been visible before that time. At the bottom we could read that it had been Gestiftit vom Frauen Verein, given by the Women's Guild of the church.

The window has in the center the cross and the crown, and is a generally handsome work. It is from the earliest era of construction, around 1912. A generous church member provided funds for cleaning the window and replacing the protective cover on the outside. The earlier cover had clouded over time. And a bright light on a timer was installed in the choir loft area, so that the window would be illuminated at night to provide some beauty in our neighborhood and a witness to the faith.

The light shines out.

It would be fair to say that our neighborhood has some of the lowest priced real estate in the city and some low income people. There is not a lot of public art. This is a positive addition.

Some time later I was attending a meeting at one of our churches in Elgin, Illinois. The church is downtown and there is another church directly across the street. I looked up at the outside of the other church building across the street and noticed an interesting array of pipes and lights, and a rosette window. This church had also provided illumination for their rosette window - the lights were hung outside of the building so the the worshippers inside the building could enjoy the beauty of the window when they had a evening service. Their light shines in.

I bless God for the spirit that chooses to put the light on the inside to provide beauty on the outside rather than putting the light on the outside to provide beauty for those on the inside. Not only does the symbolism of cross and crown witness to the faith, but to put the light on the inside for the benefit of the neighborhood is also a witness to the spirit of the Christ.

Totenfest

The Church of Peace has a tradition of marking day called "Totenfest" in the fall. This word means "Feast of the Dead" and was established in 1816 by Prussian Emperor Fredrick William III to remember soldiers who had died in the then most recent war. The Evangelical Church in Germany made the day a time not only to remember soldiers, but also all those of the congregation who had died in the last year. A churchly memorial day. Totenfest was on the last Sunday of the year, right before Advent began.

Since the Church of Peace has German Evangelical roots, Totenfest has been marked here as long as anyone can remember.

In the last several years we have used the first Sunday of November, rather than the last Sunday before Advent. This makes our Totenfest correspond to All Saints Sunday that is celebrated by other Christians.

On that day we read out the names of all those church members and church friends who have died in the previous year, and toll the bell of the church. Those so remembered in our congregation this year were:

Roger Altman,

Ruby Armstrong,

Euphemia Bernauer,

Elizabeth Harland,

Larry Held,

Margaret Kelly,

Corey Miller,

Mary Shaner,

Karen Streider,

Velma Talberg and

Donald Wilson.

Another element of the service in the last several years has been to invite members of the congregation to bring photos of their family members and loved ones to place on tables in the sanctuary. This practice comes from the Bible passage in Hebrews: "Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, ..." Many families have come to participate in this practice and bring photos with them.

On a liturgical basis, this gives church members a way to engage more fully in the remembrance of those saints who have gone before us in life. It is a way of making this holy day more real, and extend the inclusion beyond the particular families who have lost a loved one in the last 12 months.

The marking of All Saints and Totenfest has some additional benefits as well. We Americans tend to be very individualistic and tend to think that we have made ourselves. Many of us also lack a sense of history. This day reminds us that we are part of a family, a progression of people who are connected generation to generation. This connection is both biological, and also social, in communities such as the church. This is a day to remember our gratitude to those who have gone before us. And by implication, this day reminds us that we will one day ourselves be dead, and the community will either be better off because of our efforts in our time and place, or not.

Years ago, when I was the pastor of First United Methodist Church of Redwood City, California, we were embarking on a much needed program to paint and refurbish some parts of the church. There were two older church leaders, fellows, who had different points of view. One fellow, whom I will call "Noel," said something like, "Well, I won't be here to see it in any case, so what do I care?" Another fellow, I will call him George, said, "I know that I won't be here in the next century, so I want to do all I can to make sure this church is as strong as I can make it for future generations."

How do we help more people see the world like George and not like Noel? I think a perspective like George's is not only a benefit to churches, but would also be a help in addressing issues like Global Warming and the running up of a very large national debt. It is my hope that when we can dramatize the inter-generational connections of the human family with days like Totenfest and All Saints we contribute to a more George-like perspective.

Barak = blessing

Well, along with the majority of American voters I was pleased with the victory of Barack Obama for president.



Living in Iowa I feel a special involvement, since our caucus process got him started on the way back on January 3. We went over to Pleasant View School, where Nancy works as a speech therapist and where both out daughters attended. There was the largest crowd I have seen for a caucus since we moved to Iowa, and Barack won. Our college-student daughter, Becca went along with a little dis-ease, since this was her first caucus. She immediately saw some of her friends and got right into the process. It was all pretty exciting.



I have heard a lot of analysis of Barack Obama's victory and I am sure some of it is right. Here are a few observations that I haven't heard, and are personal to me, that may be interesting.



*The word BARAK means "blessing" in Hebrew. I dug up my old text book to make sure. Once again this points up the similarities between Hebrew and Arabic. I pray that our next president will indeed be a blessing. The country has lots of challenges/problems and he has his work cut out for him. When the campaign began Barak Obama was a member of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. My church is part of the United Church of Christ and we need to keep our president in our prayers.



*The older of the two Obama daughters is named MALIA. Her name means "Mary" in the Hawaiian language. Since Polynesian alphabets have fewer letters than those of European languages there is some letter substitution when European names are rendered in Polynesian. Robert becomes "Lopeti." (L substitutes for R; P substitutes for B) Richard becomes "Lisiate." You can see the drift. "Malia" for a name reminds us that this will be our first president with such connection to Hawaii. Here in the Midwest there is great interest that he will be the third president from Illinois - along with Lincoln and Grant. How exciting this must be for folks in Hawaii.



*Being a "community organizer" is not looking so bad this morning. Back in the 1970s our church took on a new direction in ministry and got involved with church based community organizing as a way of approaching ministry. We were instrumental in putting together, with other churches, a group called the Community Caring Conference (CCC), which shares office space with us to this day. Since Chicago is the center of the universe for community organizing we approached the Gamaliel Foundation for training, and many on our church staff have been trained by Gamaliel over the years. When vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin was poking fun at community organizer as a job title there was a level of discontent with the community organizers at the CCC, and with me, as I too have organizer training. Well, face-to-face, feet-on-the-ground community organizing is looking effective this November morning, and community organizer can be counted among honorable work possibilities.





*Barack Obama represents a new generation. If you will, the United States has had two Baby Boomer presidents - Bill Clinton and George W Bush. And now we have gone to the next younger generation. I am a Boomer. I was in Junior High when Obama was born. Some of my issues are simply not Barack Obama's issues, and that may be a blessing. As I was looking at the hundreds of thousands of people having a good time in Grant Park in Chicago last night, a beautiful, warm, fall night in the midwest, my mind travelled back to 1968. And at the Democratic Convention that year in Chicago there was violence against people of my generation in that same Grant Park. There was a lot of conflict around the world in 1968. I wrote about the violence at Talatelolco in October 1968. It was in 1968 that Rev. Martin Luther King was assassinated, and also Bobby Kennedy. Maybe it is a good thing that with a younger president he can look to the future more than to the past. While experience can sometimes be an asset, certain kinds of experiences can give a person a negative attitude.

Anniversary Sunday

This last Sunday, October 26, 2008 was a great day of celebration. We marked the 113th Anniversary of the Church of Peace. We dedicated a rebuilt echo organ. We celebrated 40 years of service by our Music Director, Mary Kae Waytenick.

Our congregation was organized in 1895 among German speaking immigrants in Rock Island, Illinois. We were a mission of the Iowa Council of the German Evangelical Church.

The pipe organ we use weekly was first installed in 1927. As you might guess, it has gone through substantial renovation over the years. The keyboard console has been relocated several times. In 1997 there was a major renovation. While the pipes themselves were retained and re-used the wind boxes were rebuilt and the mechanism for opening a valve and allowing air to blow through the pipe was totally rebuilt by the Levson Organ Company of Buffalo, Iowa. That was completed for the main part of the organ. There is a smaller echo organ chamber located on the other side of the chancel from the main organ, and this part of the organ was not rebuilt till 2008. So for the first time we heard the two parts of the organ play together again this last Sunday. This has been an expensive project. We are grateful to a generous donor who underwrote the project to rebuild the echo organ and chimes.

Mary Kae Sederquist began to play as the organist of the church in 1967 when she was a sophomore at Augustana College in Rock Island. Since that time there have been two major times away for her. The first was a recuperation from a serious automobile accident. The second was when she earned her master's degree from Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. Since 1976 she has been the church organist on a continuing basis. In addition to being an excellent musician, Mary Kae is a teacher and talented at organizing and calling out the musical gifts of others. She writes and arranges music for the choral and instrumental groups at the church. She encourages children and youth in their music and creates a safe environment in which they can share their music.

As you might imagine, with so many years of service and having touch the lives of so many people, it was a great day to celebrate with Mary Kae. She was surprised by having Flutes Unlimited, a group with which she has been associated, come to church and play their flutes. The church choir wrote a tribute song and sang it to her. Many musicians who know her work attended worship. Walter Haedrich played special music during the service. Carol Hubbard added to the service with keyboard music. All in all it was a great day.

Rhys Fullerlove took some video of the service which will be on the Church of Peace website. If you click on the photo of the church at the right side of the article it will take you to the website.

Niebuhr Family

When I decided to attend seminary in the late 1960s a friend of mine, Bob Wilson, kindly gave me a little paperback book called A Layman's Guide to Protestant Theology, by William Hordern. This book had been first published in 1955 by The Macmillan Company. Bob said that it would be helpful because it not only gave sketches of several theologians, but also outlined the basic ideas of the several schools of theological thinking current at the time. I read the book the summer before entering seminary in 1969.



There can be no question that Reinhold Niebuhr is the most important living American theologian. This sentence begins the chapter on American Neo-Orthodoxy. (p.147) The particular seminary I attended emphasized Process Theism, and although I read some about Neo Orthodoxy it was not something I studied deeply. I dated a woman who for a time assisted Reinhold Neibuhr in preparing documents when she was living at Union Seminary in New York City. This was where Neibuhr had taught, and he was living on the campus in retirement. He died in 1971.



When in 1991 I was called the the Church of Peace United Church of Christ in Rock Island, Illinois I realized that I was in Neibuhr country. Neibuhr graduated from Eden Theological Seminary in St Louis, Missouri. So had every minister who had served the Church of Peace before me. I had graduated from Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California.

"What did you attend that Congregationalist seminary for?" challenged Bert Kutz, the widow of one of the previous pastors who attended Eden. "I lived in California," I replied, weakly. "Swartz," Bert continued. "That's a German name. Good!" Even if I had not gone to either Eden Seminary of Elmhurst college, my forbears were German immigrants in the post 1850 period, as had most of the early members of the church. That gave us some common ground. Bert read the Christian Century magazine, which Neibuhr had helped edit for years. Her late husband, Ludwig, had read it for years, so Bert just kept it up. I, too, had been reading the Christian Century since I had been in seminary. So this gave Bert and I more in common.



I realized some time later that while Neibuhr had been born in Missouri he had grown up in Lincoln, Illinois. His father, Gustav Niebuhr, had been pastor of St. John's Church in Lincoln. Both Church of Peace in Rock Island and St John's in Lincoln had been German Evangelical Churches at their founding, and had merged with the German Reformed in the 1930s, to become part of the Evangelical and Reformed Church, and then with the 1958 with the Congregationalists to form the United Church of Christ. I snapped a photo of the historical sign at St Johns when I was at that church for a meeting last month.





I don't want to outline Neibuhr's whole career and many books here. If you Google his name you can find lots and lots of information. But I do have one or two observations.

I think Neibuhr's prominence increased greatly when he was on the cover of Time Magazine in 1948. Few Theologians are so newsworthy. You can find the cover and the cover story on Time Magazine's website. www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19480308,00.html

A few years back I read the material and realized that his point of view was far more realistic about what had been happening in Europe leading up to the Second World War. Partly that was because he was at Union Seminary with the likes of Tillich and Bonhoeffer. We often forget that the bulk of American theologians at that time were pretty skeptical of engagement in Europe and critical of war as a means of dealing with conflict. They were generally pretty optomistic about humanity and slow to realize just how bad things were becoming.

Neibuhr was far more sanguine, and considered the war against the Nazi's to be a just war. I think that the reason that he was featured in Time is that his point of view turned out to be far more correct than those of many other theologians at the time.

In addition to his general theological stance of "Christian realism" I have come to believe that the fact that his family was bi-lingual German and English, and that worship in the German Evangelical Church was for fairly recent immigrants, and often in the German language, contributed to a far clearer understanding of the situation in Germany in his family and in his church than most Americans expereinced. The German Evangelical Church and the Neibuhr family was more international in stance - they were reading the European periodicals and writing back and forth to family members who were living there. I think Reinhold Neibuhr was far more knowledgable about specifics of what was taking place in Germany than were most American theologians. His interest and knowledge was specific and he was well informed.

As you might well imagine, those of us in the United Church of Christ here in Illinois are proud of Reinhold Niebuhr and his brother H. Richard Niebuhr and the contribution that this whole family has made over the years. I am glad to have been grafted in, even though I went to that Congregationalist seminary out in California.

Redwood City

Where does the time go? Here I am with my older daughter Taylor in front of the parsonage of the First United Methodist Church of Redwood City, California. I was appointed to that church in the early 1980s. It was while I was there that Nancy and I were married. And it was while we were there that our first daughter was born. I was pastor of that church for six years and had a good time in that assignment.

I think the congregation enjoyed their "young parsonage family." We certainly received a lot lof kindly attention and support. It turns out that the Redwood City Church sponsors a center for infants and toddlers as part of their mission and ministry. So Taylor was able to go with me to church each morning and stay at the center as I did my work. This center was a wonderful blessing to our family on a personal basis, as well as a great resource to the wider community.

Fr. Mottet

This Sunday Marvin Mottet will receive the Pacem in Terris award for years of work in the community. Church of Peace became familiar with Father Mottet when he, along with our Pastor Emeritus, Ken Kuenning worked together to organize Quad Cities Interfaith (QCI) to bring together communites if faith to address social issues in the Quad Cities.

QCI has operated for many years now, with ups and downs. It is affiliated with the Gamaliel Foundation, out of Chicago, to do church based community organizing. QCI has been a beacon in the area to bring together folks from the Catholic and Protestant communities to work together for justice. On occasion it has also been a place for Jewish and Islamic communities to join the conversation as well.

Many folks have grand ideas about how to build a more just and peaceful community. Fr. Mottet and QCI has worked to bring these grand ideas to practical consequence by transforming problems into issues that we can address together.

It is interesting to note that Chicago has been, if you will, the world capitol of "community organizing" as a way of addressing how to change a community for the better. With the candidacy of Barack Obama, who has a background in community organizing in Chicago, the whole notion of community organizing is getting more discussion. We have been doing community organizing here at the Church of Peace for at least the last 30 years.

We are grateful for partners like Fr. Mottet in this journey.

Oktoberfest

When our church community was organized in 1895 it was among German speaking immigrants living in Rock Island. In fact, until about the time of the first world war the services of worship were conducted in the German language at the church. While we try not to overdo it, we acknowledge our German heritage on occasion during the year.

One of those occasions is an Oktoberfest in the fall. Oktoberfest is a fun occasion with polka music, brats and potato salad. By holding this event at the Elks Lodge it also means that there is beer available. What is Oktoberfest without beer?

The driving spirit of this event is some of the younger adults in the congregation and I enjoy it too!

Chincultic

On Saturday, July 19, 2008, Nancy and I were on a mission trip in Southern Mexico. We were staying in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico. On this day our group drove south and visited an archaeological site near Comitan. The site is called "Chincultic" and since it is a Mayan word it is sometimes spelled Chinkultick - and different variations. The day we visited it was raining like the dickens.



You can imagine how surprised I was to read that on Friday, October 2, 2008 that six Mayan villagers were killed by the state police at that same site! It turns out that there is a Mayan village near the site and that the villagers had taken over, evicted the administrative personnel from the site, (allowing the archaeologists to stay), and then set up their own way to charge tourists to enter the site. The tourists were charged a reduced rate, and the villagers said that they were going to use the money to improve the roads and other civic purposes. Improvements they had been asking for from the state to no avail.



Well, the state police were sent in to break this up and the villagers resisted. Lots of people were wounded and six were shot and killed. Five state police officers are being held in the case. (If you google "Chincultic" in "news" you can get the Associated Press coverage.)







I think that this points up just how tense the situation remains in Chiapas between the government and the indigenous people. Also, since the villagers were armed with sticks, rocks and machettes and the police with guns it emphasizes the disparity between the indigenous and the agents of the state. Apparently the villagers disarmed the police and negotiated to return the firearms in exchange for villagers who had been arrested. The exchange was made, according to the news.

Tlatelolco - another angle

When I looked at the previous blog I realized that some might want to try to read the monument at Tlatelolco.

Tlatelolco Massacre

October 2, 2008 is the 40th anniversary of the massacre of Mexican students at the Plaza of the Three Cultures in Mexico City on October 2, 1968. This is known at the Tlatelolco Massacre.

In 1968 the summer Olympics were scheduled for Mexico City in October. Beginning in late July of that year there were a series of student demonstrations in Mexico City and the President Diaz Ordaz had responded with violence against the peaceful students. In August some 150,000 gathered in protest in the central square downtown, the Zocalo. Another demonstration was scheduled for the Plaza de Tlatelolco on the afternoon of October 2.



This site is known is known as the Plaza of the Three Cultures because there was an Aztec site here at the time of the conquest by the Europeans known as Tlatelolco. There is a colonial era church, San Francisco, that was built on the site. On this church there is a plaque with these words: "On August 13, 1521, heroically defended by Cuauhtemoc, Tlatelolco fell into the hands of Hernan Cortes. It was neither a triumph nor a defeat: it was the painful birth of the Mestizo nation that is Mexico today."

In the middle twentieth century a complex of bland modern architecture was built with apartments and Mexican Federal government offices. Thus, three cultures: Aztec, Colonial, and Modern.



At about 5:30 pm. on October 2 there was a crowd of some 10,000 or so demonstrators in the plaza and the military opened fire on them with automatic weapons. Some sources say from the ruins, others say from the upper floors of the modern structures. There may have been some confusion with the army firing on agents in the crowd on ground level. The demonstrators were unarmed. There were helicopters in the air and many were arrested and other demonstrators were killed. Some ran to the Church of San Francisco for safety. They were chased, beaten and some murdered.



The official government-offered death toll is 32. Other estimates are much higher.

The massacre quelled further demonstrations before the Olympics. However, according to Alan Riding in his 1985 book Distant Neighbors, "...the regime's response shattered the concept of rule by consensus and undermined the legitimacy of the entire system." (p.60) Some histories of Mexico divide history as before and after the Tlatelolco massacre. It is sometimes characterized as the "end of the revolution" which began in 1917.




I had read that a whole generation of middle class Mexican students were disillusioned by the massacre.

In August 1999 I took my daughter Taylor with me for a trip to Mexico City, after she had completed a year of High School that included instruction in Spanish. On August 3 we took one of those Gray Line tours that include Teotihuacan with the pyramids of the sun and the moon, the Basilica of the Virgin of Guadalupe and the Plaza of the Three Cultures.

When we were stopped at the Plaza of the Three Cultures in our little mini-bus I asked our middle-class bi-lingual guide, "Wasn't there a shooting here in 1968 involving students?"

"Shooting?" he replied. "It was a massacre!" He went on to tell us that he was then a young adult and was "in" it, and his cousin was wounded by the military. He also asserted that ovens at military installations were secretly burning bodies of students that had been transported from the scene at Tlatelolco. And our guide was a very straight guy.

This lends support in my mind to the assertion that there are many in Mexico disillusioned by the Tlatelolco Massacre.

During the regime of Vicente Fox there was an attempt to do a retrospective investigation of the events of 1968 and an evaluation of the role and culpability of President Diaz Ordaz. This fell far short of the hopes and expectations of those who had called for the investigation.

The most extensive coverage of the events of October 2, 1968 at Tlatelolco was done by the journalist Elena Poniatowska in the 1975 book pictured above. This is a series of interviews with many involved one way or another.

The top photo is the monument erected to the fallen students at Tlatelolco, with San Francisco Church in the background.

CROP WALK, October 5

Youth and other members of the Church of Peace will participate in the CROP WALK sponsored by Churches United of the Quad Cities. This walk will take place on Sunday afternoon, October 5, 2008.

Each of the walkers from the church will receive donations to contribute to the CROP offering. Most of the funds received will be remitted to Church World Service for international aid to alleviate poverty and hunger. To learn more about Church World Service one can go to their website: http://www.churchworldservice.org/

A portion of the offering will be retained locally to address hunger in the Quad Cities. Since the food pantry at the Church of Peace is part of the Churches United coalition of food pantries it seems only fair that members of this church would participate with others to help raise funds to address hunger.

At a deeper level, the CROP WALK draws attention to the fact that there are low income and hungry people in our hometowns as well as around the world. And that addressing the needs of hungry people requires the efforts of the churches and other members of the civil society. We at the church act as community organizers to draw concerned people together to walk to aid the hungry, and to think and pray together as to why there are so many people in need.

Sanctuary Interior

Here is a photo of the Church of Peace that was taken some thirty years ago. It is an interesting study because the colors are a little different - it was then blue cast, and now it is cream. It is interesting also because this photo was so carefully done.

The church interior is more colorful than many sanctuaries, with a mural, and stencils on the walls, and stain glass windows. There is also quite of lot of carved wood.

Tragic Death

Today I participated in a funeral service for a man whose body was found in a car a few blocks away from the Church of Peace. The service was at the Apostolic Truth Temple, located on the corner of 12th Street and 12th Avenue, just across the intersection from Church of Peace in Rock Island, Illinois. The pastor of Apostolic Truth Church, Pastor Mark Anderson, invited me to participate. Other clergy sharing in the service were the Associate Pastor of that church, Matthew Peterson, Pastor Minnie Babers of the Apostolic Temple of Victory, and Elder Daryl Thompson of the House of Fire Ministries. It was a privelege to participate in this service of support for the family and the neighborhood. Several church leaders provided inspirational music. There were four speakers from family and friends, including one by our Rock Island Alderman Terry Brooks.

Gary Bourrage died of a gunshot wound to the neck. He was 33 years old. It certainly appears to be foul play.

Gary grew up at the Apostolic Truth Church. His aunt, Pastor Rena Dawkins, was the minister at that church for years, until she passed away. Pastor Mark Anderson was Gary's cousin.

This is the second such funeral of a young adult who died of gun violence that I have participated in at one of our neighborhood churches in the last two years. It all just seems so tragic.

Conflictive Reality

This is an account of a visit to Acteal, a small Mayan town north of San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico, that took place on July 16, 2008. My wife Nancy and I were on a delegation of church people on a mission trip to Mexico.

We were up and ready to get into the van by 8:00 am. One of the young missionaries accompanied us this day. We drove north and uphill through Chenhalo to Acteal. We drove past the Zapatista village and the Mexican military camp. Quick trip. What a contrast to 1998 when there were military roadblocks, and we had to show our passports and get out of the van.



The first thing I notice is that the steps down to the community are paved, when before they were dirt. The next thing I notice is that there is a new church. Fresh but not too well built. And the third thing is that there is an assembly area built above the crypts for the fallen.


I realize that this is the first time I have been to Acteal when it was not the 22nd of the month. This is the first time when it was not an assembly of remembrance, but that our group was essentially alone in the community to learn about the reality of the situation.


Our group was ushered into the church and we listened to a presentation about their situation. Our hosts were members of the leadership team of Las Abejas, the bees. This is a pacifist group who agree with the Zapatistas that the situation is intolerable for indigenous people in the area, but do not believe in violence or taking up arms. The massacre of Acteal took place on December 22, 1997. However, Antonio, our informant begins speaking about a land rights dispute that began in 1992.




After we were seated in the church we were asked to sign in and to give our internet address! They were happy to meet us and glad for international visitors. They asked who we are and we introduced ourselves as people from the United Church of Christ and also people from INESIN. They introduced themselves as Las Abejas of Saljalchel which was founded as a Catholic group in 1992. They were founded on the word of God, and always ask themselves, “What does God want us to do?” The Bible speaks for human rights. In 1992 President Salinas focused on land. There was a change in the constitution of Mexico in regard to land rights. This was a big change. We resisted. This land had been given to us by our forbears.

“We decided to use non-violent ways to settle land disputes.” On December 9, 1992 there was a community meeting on this topic. After the meeting some of our members played a little basketball after the meeting and then as they were walking home there was an ambush. Some (one, two)? Was shot but not killed. They went back to Chenalho to ask for help. The authorities said “no.” We carried them on a stretcher in the rain at night. Some went to Chenalho to accompany us and were put in jail for 86 hours. The justice authorities were against them. We contacted a private lawyer to seek justice but it was too much money, 8000 pesos. So we went to the Fray Bart human rights center. 2000 people fasting and praying. We did no work. In protest we walked the 70 kilometers to San Cristobal de las Casas to protest for the prisoners. We received lots of attention. We went to the offices of the government. This also received attention from Amnesty International. It took 27 days to get our people out of jail. This was reported to the Governor in the process too.

Then in April 1993 in the same community there was exploration for minerals in the area, and they destroyed our gardens, trees and houses. We said, “Who gave you this right?” We were getting no respect! “That’s our food,” we said. “We have orders from the government,” they said. “It is not necessary to ask the community. And if you try to resist I will have you put in jail.” They were from Campeche’. “We are not animals,” we said. There were a lot of us and very few of them. The mineral explorer began to recognize his situation. At the end the explorer was let go after he signed a document. With this document our people went to the authorities in Chenalho. “You should back the local people, because you are our local presence. It turns out that the people doing the exploration were from PMEX - the Mexican petroleum conglomerate.

This is how the case became public from the bottom up. PMEX looked all around Chiapas, and when these other communities heard what we had done they protested too.

In January 1994 there was the Zapatista uprising. We at Las Abejas are pacifist. While we support the goals of the Zapatistas we do not agree with the use of arms and violence.

Las Abejas also supported Bishop Samuel Ruiz in the 1996 Peace accords and on Indigenous Rights.

Eight days before the massacre here in 1997 we tried to start a dialogue.

Paz y Justicia. This name is ironic. It is a violent paramilitary group, but the name is Peace and Justice.

We asked, “What shall we do?” What if we just put ourselves in the hands of the paramilitaries?” Would a sacrifice change the discussion? Christ image? Just too scared about the whole people. .

People at the church knew something could happen. “Don’t be afraid, the bullets cannot take away your soul.” The people at the church were displaced persons from other communities. They were fasting and praying. We heard guns in the early morning. AK47s. People ran out of the church and went to the ravine. The paramilitaries shot at the empty church and then went hunting for the people. They shot at the people who were trapped in the ravine.

“They killed my friend Alonzo, and his wife and baby.” Alonzo’s last words were “Please forgive them.” These paramilitaries had red ribbons on their arms and their foreheads.

Altogether there were nine men, twenty-one women and fifteen children killed. The bodies stayed on the ground till night. Then the state government came and took the bodies to Tuxtla. We had to protest to the Red Cross to get the bodies of our community back. We feared that if we did not reclaim the bodies that it would be denied that this event had ever happened. Ultimately we prevailed and the bodies are buried in the ravine, where the people died. We had a funeral here on December 25, 1997. Bishop Ruiz was here.

We have had some divisions in the community recently. “Maybe we just will do God’s will.” So we just go back to our roots.

Analysis: The element that stood out for me hearing the account as given on this day was that it began with land. Disputed land. The impression for me was that what set this community, Las Abejas, apart was that they were organized and spoke up for their position. And that such uppity communities are seen as a danger, and that is why they were violently attacked.

When I asked about if this violent event was unusual my informants said, “no.” That such shootings had happened in several places. However, they usually happened between groups that have not forsaken violence. So if a group has had many members killed they are ashamed and do not want to admit it. They see this as revealing a strategic decline, and therefore it does not become widely known. What separates Acteal is that as non-violent pacifists they were ready to publicize widely what had happened. Because they were innocent.

After this we went to the crypts. Here there are photos and descriptions of all of those who were killed by the paramilataries that day in December, 1997.

After this we ate lunch in the car and drove back to San Cristobal. I, for one, was thinking what it would be like to walk the seventy kilometers to protest the imprisonment of my friends.

Red Sea

For the last several weeks the lectionary readings for the Hebrew Scriptures have been in Exodus. This last Sunday the reading was about Moses crossing the Red Sea.

For my children's time in the service I looked in my file and got out a booklet of children's art that I had collected quite a number of years ago from the children in our Vacation Bible School/Day Camp when they were talking about the Exodus narrative.

The picture at the top of this article is one of the illustrations of Moses walking through the midst of the parted waters. For some reason I had always assumed that the reason for using red for the water was simply that the red crayon was in the child's hand at the time. As we were talking in children's time I finally realized that the reason for the red water in the picture is because it was the Red Sea.

I was once again reminded that kids see the world in their own way. And if we pay careful attention we may see and hear the scripture in fresh ways by attending to a child's point of view.

Just Coffee

A request came in yesterday's mail from Churches United, our local church coalition, to help sell "fair trade" coffee to benefit their program. For more information look at http://www.churchesunited.net/.


I was reminded again that the second most traded international product, after oil, is coffee! Coffee is an international product that comes from warmer areas of the world - Central and South America, Africa, Sumatra and such. The best coffee is produced by labor intensive methods with hand picking, sorting, drying and packing. With coffee being such an important international product, it is actually pretty significant if people of good will change their buying patterns.


In the last several years there has been a movement to pay higher prices directly to coffee producers, rather than to have them sell to wholesalers at depressed prices. The resulting product is known as "fair trade coffee" because the price paid to producers seems more fair. These coffee growers participate in cooperatives that set high standards and coach the producers on such things as organic production, growing coffee in the shade and growing coffee in a bird friendly way.

Such fair trade coffee is marketed in at least three ways.

Some of the cooperatives market their product directly to consumers over the internet. Just google "just coffee" or "Mut Vitz" to find some of these botique producers.



Many church groups sell coffee at their churches to benefit these small producers. I know that in Rock Island I can buy excellent coffee at Broadway Presbyterian Church and St James Lutheran Church. They sell high quality coffee as a service to their members and as a mission project for the larger church. I bet the product that Churches United is selling is this sort of coffee.


The third way, and the way which to me shows the most promise, is to look for and buy coffee in my local market with the "fair trade" logo on the package. Target has several varieties with their Archer Brands label. I can find a "fair trade" coffee at my local HyVee, but I must look carefully. I can find one kind of Seattle's Best that is "fair trade." The reason that I like the logo option is for convenience. Also, if buyers like our family provide a market for a product it will be supplied. Our family buys no coffee other than "fair trade," and it is good to reinforce our local grocers when they do something right.



"Fair trade" coffee is for the most part excellent, high end coffee. It is a superior product that comes from folks taking pride in producing a product that they make with their own hands.


Another element to buying "fair trade" coffee is that it is a positive step the immigration issue. It is commonly agreed that most people would prefer to live in their home country and with their family if they are able to make a living while doing so. By providing a better price to coffee producers we help make it possible for some Mexicans from Chiapas and some Guatemalans to make a living while remaining at home.



Here are some photos. The Seattle's Best coffee shows the "fair trade" logo as the little black and white seal on the front of the package. The "Caracolillo" coffee produced by Just Coffee was purchased on the internet. Caracolillo means 'little snail' and corresponds with the illustration on the front of the package.

Home Damaged

Here is a clipping of the Lerch family home that was damaged July 21 in Rock Island.

Without Power

I drove to the church in a hard rain on Monday morning, July 21 to find that a very strong wind had blown through Rock Island. The closer I came to the church the more debris was in the street and when I came the last few blocks there was no electrical power.

At church there was neither electrical power nor telephone service. With our cell phones we received word that our Work Camps Director, Erin, was unable to come to church because a very large tree had fallen in the driveway of the family home and she was unable to move her car. There was a work camp group from Southern Illinois at the church waiting to go to work that day to help rehabilitate some housing. Our partner, Project NOW called to say that they were unable to receive the group.

I walked over to the parsonage and asked if they wanted to help alleviate storm damage. Their answer was "Sure!"

We drove to the 1400 block of 45th Avenue in Rock Island, where Erin's family lives. Their home is right next door to a family from our church. The church family had a 140 year old oak tree uprooted next to the driveway. It had fallen on the roof of their home. The family was in the yard. The house was uninhabitable. To date they living in a motel waiting for the repair of their home.

The work camp group helped several families remove tree limbs that had fallen. I think their presence also represented an encouragement.

Well, the church was without electrical power until Thursday, July 24. We served sack lunches in the front yard to kids who came for the summer lunch program. Our big concern was that we had hundreds of dollars invested in frozen food for the lunch program. In the photo above you can see my Honda generator outside the front door supplying power for the freezer.

We tend to forget how much we depend on electricity till it is gone for a time. The good point was that people actually talked with each other more since the television sets were off.

Confirmation Class

The confirmation class resumed last night, this was the first Wednesday after Labor Day. The Church of Peace was a German language congregation when it was first organized in 1895. At that time the denomination was called "German Evangelical" or Deutches Evangelische, and being part of the Lutheran family of churches, has taken confirmation pretty seriously since its beginning.

The class meets weekly during the school year for a two year period. I worked through the class schedule for this 2008-2009 year and there are twenty-seven class meetings! That means a youth should attend over fifty class meetings as part of their experience.

This year the major topics are the Bible and the History of the Church. The alternate year is the Mission of the Church and we talk about faith. One of the wonderful elements of the two year class taught by the pastor is that I get to know youth in the church pretty well. That is a privilege.

This church has kept careful records of those who have been confirmed here. When we had our 100 year anniversary we compiled the names of those who had been confirmed in this community of faith and published a booklet. There are some 1400 names. The names are listed both chronologically and alphabetically, so this booklet would be a help to those doing genealogical research.

Here is a photo of Courtney and Michael who were confirmed on Palm Sunday 2006.

Beautiful Gift

Last May a lifelong member of the Church of Peace, Nancy Snyder, died suddenly. She was a single person and her brothers and their families made all of the arrangements and when the funeral had been completed one of the brothers called me on the phone. He explained that Nancy had carried forward a collection of Hummel nativity figures that may have been established by their mother, Marge, or may have been begun by a family friend, Mildred Lamp. In any case, after family discussion, they wanted to make these figures a gift to the church.

In this photo they have been set up by our Altar Guild chairperson so that the council could see them. They are stored away and will be used at Advent and Christmas. What a beautiful gift. And beyond their beauty, what an honor that a collection made with love over years and years has found a place to be shared in the church.

Labor Day Parade

This morning a group of members from the Church of Peace participated in the Labor Day Parade in Rock Island. It was a nice, cool, day and we stepped off soon after the 9:30 start time and were done by 11 am. We ended at the home of one of our church members, Myrna Adams, and watched more of the parade from her front yard.

Our group was about twenty persons. Mainly it was the church brass band playing songs from the back of a hay wagon. The theme for the parade this year was trains - you know, "the Rock Island Line..." So the songs included Do the Locomotion, This Train is Bound for Glory, Gospel train and the Rock Island Line.

We also had walkers handing out candy and literature. Two persons carried the "God Is Still Speaking" banner published by our national United Church of Christ.

Here is a photo of my wife Nancy and I waiting for the beginning of the parade a few years back when the theme was "cartoon characters." I am Shreck and Nancy is Minnie Mouse.

Tough Week

It has been a tough week here at the Church of Peace in Rock Island. We had a series of almost daily break ins at the church that seemed to come to a conclusion on Thursday morning. Early that morning the Rock Island Police found a broken window when patroling the building and when they entered the building they found a suspect hiding under a desk in an office.


The photo at the left is a police officer dusting a computer for fingerprints. It is not quite the television program CSI, but many objects were investigated for evidence.


I was impressed with the outflow of concern about our situation. Two of the neighborhood pastors visited with me at the church to offer their help and to show their concern. They assurred me that our church will be in their prayers this coming Sunday. It is good to be reminded that we are not alone trying to do God's work in our neighborhood.


The officers interviewed members of the church staff and the staff of the Community Caring Conference about the incidents.



It is surprisingly stressful to be the victims of crime. (I guess we should remember this, especially since the Community Caring Conference offers a program of assistance to victims of crime! But somehow it is always different when one is personally involved.)

Yesterday morning there was a television crew here from the local NBC affiliate to do a story about the situation. It is always a dilimma - on the one hand we want to tell our story, on the other hand I always fear looking silly or saying something in a way that I did not intend. When I was finished with the interview one of the staff brushed some powdered sugar from a doughnut off of my face. Well, fortunately that did not show up on the television.


If you look carefully at this third photo you will see that the pane of glass to the left of the door is in place. And the one on the right has been broken out. Broken glass is visible on the carpet along with a lamp that is flipped on its side. My (limited) experience with with a church burglery is that far more damage and expense comes from people breaking into things that from the stuff that they take.

Our neighbors have shown deep respect for the church for over a century. This set of break ins is so unusual based on our previous experience. It makes me sad to think that there are folks so desperate that they feel compelled to steal from a church and do damage to God's house.

Bix Sunday

Davenport Iowa was home to a well know jazz musician and composer, Bix Beiderbecke. There is a road race for runners called the Bix that takes place near the end of July each year. This year there was also a Jazz Festival in Davenport that same weekend.

The church music director,

Mary Kae Waytenick, is pretty resourceful. Noticing that there were many church members who also play brass instruments, she organized a Dixieland brass group several years ago. It has taken the name "12th Street Brass."

This year on July 27 all of the music in the service was in a Dixieland style with the 12th Street Brass playing. Mary Kae arranged the music so that all the players could participate - from the featured pieces to accompanying the congregation on the hymns.

Mary Kae also found music written by Bix Beiderbecke that was featured in the service. This service was well attended and a lot of fun.

Our altar guild chairperson, Bea Anderson, snapped a few photos of the brass band rehearsing before worship. Not only was the music enjoyable and different from our usual fare, the band and the singing group included a number of young adults in worship.

This was a great Sunday.

Outreach Director

For many years the church has been able to employ an Outreach Director to help manage areas of ministry for the church in our neighborhood. The salary has been underwritten for the most part by an annual grant from the Illinois Conference of the United Church of Christ, through the Mission Support Committee of the conference.

The Outreach Director at the church is Angela Richardson. It is our Outreach Director who is the key manager for programs like the Book Nook, the Food Pantry, Summer Enrichment program for children, and the like. The Outreach Director also works with the Emergency Assistance program.

Most churches have some people who come to the door seeking immediate emergency assistance. Our location means that we have even more than average. Many who come simply speak to the church secretary, Nora, who is able to give them a voucher for the food pantry nearest their home. Many are directed to the food pantry at Second Baptist Church, which is a neighbor church with a week day food pantry. Nora also has access to small packets of disposable diapers - we collect these at Christmas through our "Diapers for baby Jesus" program. (Members bring packets of diapers and place them under the Christmas Trees in the sanctuary.) We also have a modest supply of local bus passes, to help folks get to doctor visits and the like.

However, some who approach the church need some counsel and support. These persons are referred to the Outreach Director. Angela is able to listen. We also have a slogan, "treat everyone with dignity and respect." While this sounds simple we sometimes get the impression that such an approach is difficult to find for those seeking emergency assistance. Many times Angela is able to provide some imformation and referral that is a help.

Many issues are well beyond our ability to help. But we do what we can. We remember that we are a church and do what we do because we are loyal to Jesus, who encouraged those who follow him to offer simple, direct support to those in need.

Summer Work Camps

One of the ways the church supports our immediate neighborhood is by helping to maintain and rehabilitate local housing. At one point church members walked through our neighborhood and recorded some 175 abandoned homes that blighted the area, reduced home prices and made our neighborhood unsafe. Bad things happen in abandoned houses.

So we made improving housing one of the points of our church mission statement.

We helped establish a local group to buy and renovate houses and sell them at affordable prices to low income persons. This effort was merged into Rock Island Economic Growth some years ago.

Another effort has been to bring in youth groups from churches around the Midwest - Iowa, Illinois, Ohio, Wisconsin - to do work camps to assist in bring houses up to par.

Our current partner is Project NOW. They have a number of rental units that need to be cleaned up between tenants. By doing this with volunteer labor we can help keep the costs lower to Project NOW and to the tenants.


The groups stay in our parish house and have a good summer experience. Work Camp groups stay from three to six days and work on houses and apartment units under the supervision of Project NOW staff. We have a summer camps coordinator who makes local arrangements and is the host for each work camp groups. The coordinator greets the group, shops for food for the campers to prepare, and helps arrange evening programs - either educational or recreational.

The work camps coordinator for summer 2008 was Erin Lambert, a recent graduate of University of Iowa. Seven church groups participated in work camps this summer.