Off to Mexico

I am off to San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico, beginning Friday, January 22. I will meet Rev. Paula Bidle and her husband, George Moore, who were mission volunteers in with the Diocese of San Cristobal in the middle 1990s. Together we will be there to represent the Illinois Maya Ministries and Rev. Felix Ortiz-Cotto, Area Executive for Latin American and the Caribbean of the Global Ministries, a partnership between the Disciples of Christ and the United Church of Christ. The specific purpose of our visit is to be present at the 50th Anniversary of Bishop Samuel Ruiz Garcia's elevation to Bishop of the Roman Catholic Church, which took place on January 25, 1960. That is back when John XXIII was Pope! Above is a group photo with Don Samuel Ruiz on January 25, 1997. This delegation was present that January, and were invited to participate in the celebration that year in the Cathedral. We are, L-R, Rev. Jeff Nichols, then Conference Minister of the Illinois Conference United Church of Christ, Rev. Bonnie Beaupre, Chicago Association Minister, Rev. Michelle Prentice-Leslie, Illinois UCC Pastor, Bishop Ruiz, Rev. Juan Saavedra, a Pastor from the California-Nevada Conference of the United Methodist Church, Martha Pierce, Illinois Maya Ministry, Rev. Michael Swartz, Pastor of the Church of Peace United Church of Christ, Rock Island, Illinois.

On the visit this year George, Paula and I intend to visit several partners in the area in addition to attending the celebration for Bishop Ruiz, now retired since 2002. We will visit with SiPaz, an international group working for peace; INESEN, an intercultural institute in the area working to bring about ecumenical understanding, and Melel, a group supporting street children in San Cristobal. We also hope to visit a coffee cooperative that produces organic, bird friendly, fair trade coffee, and one of the pastors and parishes out in a more rural area.

The wonderful element in the experience in the area over these many years is that we have built relationships with some church folks of good will in the area. The faithfulness of the relationships over the years strengthens our mutual ministry.

Please pray for our little travelling group which will be in Mexico this next week or so.

Codex Sinaiticus

It sometimes seems to be an oxymoron when we talk about discoveries pertaining to ancient scripture. If it is so old, how can we "discover" something new.

Well, beginning last July (2009), anyone with access to the Internet can look at one of the oldest and most complete biblical manuscripts in the world. The document is called "Codex Sinaiticus" and can be found at its own website: http://www.codexsinaiticus.org/

A little historical background: This hand written book with a binding was found by Constantin Tischendorf (1815-1874), a professor of theology at Leipzig, in the monastery of St Catherine on Mount Sinai. On a visit in 1844 he found some leaves of the Old Testament manuscript, and in a later visit in 1859 he saw the New Testament segment. The codex, written in Greek, probably dates from the 4th century, and most scholars believe that it was written in Egypt.

Tischendorf arranged for the Czar of Russia to buy the document, and so it was acquired by the Imperial Library at St. Petersburg. It was sold in 1933 to the trustees of the British Museum.

Codex Sinaiticus is considered a most authoritative text, and quite early. It was instrumental in the "Revised" versions of the scripture which were begun in 1881. This was because it pre-dates manuscripts on which many modern European editions were based before that time.

One of my personal treasures is an 1870 edition of the New Testament, in English, with comparisons between the Authorized Edition of the time with materials from the then newly discovered manuscripts, edited by Tischendorf, (pictured above.) As you might imagine, this little book was very controversial in 1870!

WELL, HERE IS WHERE WE GET TO THE "NEWNESS." Prior to this year, if one wished to see the ancient manuscript in total one would have to travel to four countries, because portions of the document are at The British Museum, the National Library of Russia, St. Catherine's Monastery and Leipzig University Library. Now all of the pages are photographed and may be examined at the above website - moving from page to page over the Internet. The project is online, and there will be further developments as time goes by. This is truly phenomenal.

So on this cold January morning, from my office in Rock Island, I was able to log on and look at the text for next Sunday in a 1600 year old manuscript! This really democratizes biblical research and makes what was very obscure immediately accessible. Wow!

Clinton Presidential Center

The highlight of our after Christmas trip was a visit to the Clinton Presidential Center in Little Rock, Arkansas. We were able to walk over to the Center from our hotel, which was close by. Both are along a body of water that I thought was a riverfront, but is apparently David D Terry Lake. The locals thought it was chilly at 45 degrees. We thot is was a welcome, warm relief!

In designing the building for the Center the guiding principle from President Clinton to the architect was to make it look like a bridge, echoing his theme of "bridge to the 21st century." In this they were successful, and the site of the library is near the water and next to an old railroad bridge.

There was a quite a lot of information in the Center. Beautiful displays. Interactive locations. There was a full size replica of the Oval Office and the Cabinet Room. There were lots of helpful docents, such as the one who took a photo of our family. Once again, it is interesting to reflect again and in some detail about events which took place during one's own lifetime. We were reminded once again of what a good eight years this was for our family. Of course, these were important years for our daughters, who were then young. But it was also a time of economic growth for our family such as has not been the same since.

We got a couple of those little electronic devices that look like cell phones. When the user comes to a location there is a number, and when that number is punched into the device, there is a recording about what one is looking at. It was all Bill Clinton's voice. I think I had forgotten how articulate a person he is. Speaking easily and fluently. Sharing thoughts. While there may not be a one-to-one correlation, there is a sense that the speaker is a far more competent person when they speak clearly and articulately. Even the Romans emphasized oratory as part of the qualification for public office.

National Civil Rights Museum

Our family likes to travel right after Christmas, and this year one of the places we stopped was Memphis, Tennessee, and there we visited the National Civil Rights Museum. It was a moving experience to walk through a long timeline oriented exhibit that narrated the experience of African American persons in America.


The museum itself is located in the Loraine Motel, the site of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Something that I did not know before this visit is that this motel was Black owned, and
thus the place that leaders such as King commonly stayed. So a would be killer could make a good guess that he would be there at this location.

It is always interesting and a little disconcerting to talk about history that has taken place in one's own lifetime. One of my minister colleagues from California, Rev. James Lawson, was one of the leaders with King who was prominent in the pictures and quotations on the walls.

We walked through a bus of that era and saw the life sized figures of Rosa Parks and the bus driver, and read about the confrontation that began the Montgomery bus boycott. Details on the wall also outlined that she had been trained at the Highlander Center and was prepared mentally and spiritually for this moment when it came. Often when we hear about it in the media it is presented as though she was just especially tired and fed up on this day and decided not to move on an impulse. This is certainly not the whole story. Rosa Parks was also a trained organizer, and part of a group.



A heart stopping exhibit was a bus that had been bombed that was in the museum. The aluminum that was stretched and blown open was a dramatic example of the force. And I was reminded of how much the current terrorists who blow things up have in common with the racist terrorists in the American South. The combination of murders, intimidation, arrests, jailing, police dogs, beatings, bombings, fire hoses - it was something pretty powerful to address. And to do so with non-violence.

I had not thought about this era for some time. The museum also elicited a good conversation with our daughters.


Over dinner I shared with them that although it all seems so clearly cut and dried, good and bad, just and unjust, at the time all of this was controversial. It was not so clear cut in the media or in politics.


I also shared with them the analysis that prior to Presidency of John Kennedy that the Democratic Party could depend on the "solid south" to deliver lots of votes for President in national elections. And after President Kennedy's efforts, and those of his brother Bobby Kennedy during this era, and especially after the Voting Rights Act passed by congress and signed by Lyndon Johnson, the south is now solidly Republican. The Republican party has taken up the mantle of White resentment.

I found it sorrowful that the museum seemed to stop the narrative around 1968. Sometimes it feels like there has not been so much progress since that time.

Children's Time

Each week in worship at the Church of Peace there is a moment called "Children's Time," when the kids come up to the chancel and we talk for a few minutes. Well, this last Sunday there was a larger group than usual. Last Sunday was the week of the Children's Christmas Program, it was about bells. And there was a good group of kids present. And I have a fork in my hand and telling the story of the woman who wanted to be buried with a fork in her hand, because there was more to come. So she should keep her fork.

So the decorations are beautiful in the church, and there is a good group of kids, and many of them are looking at me and listening to the story!

It is good for children to know that they have a time and place at church.

Cars in the Parking Lot

A number of years ago I heard about a frustrated business owner, whose business was not going as well as she had hoped, and she believed that her employees were slacking off, and that was the root of the problem. In a staff meeting she proclaimed, "I want to see those cars in the parking lot!" You know, that is a measure of what is going on at a facility. The cars in the parking lot.

That crossed my mind a few weeks ago when I arrived a little late to church on a weekday. There were already a number of cars in the parking lot, and there was no church meeting scheduled for the day. These were the cars of the employees, and some students in the Lights ON for Learning program.

That started my mind rolling. Our church staff roster lists eleven members. There are six persons who receive a paycheck from the Community Caring Conference. There are three employees of Blackhawk College who report directly to the church building to do work for the college. And this does not mention various supervisors who work in other locations and have some responsibility for activities that take place here at the church. The way I think of it, some twenty persons think of the church as the place where they work.

This is a high water mark for the time that I have been here. The Church of Peace itself has three more employees than last year - their jobs are funded by various grants we receive. In an economy where unemployment is up it is good to be working in the opposite direction. (We do wish that the jobs we provide were higher income.)

Many years ago when there was debate about whether the church should move or stay at its present location one of the reasons to stay was to provide an "anchor" in the neighborhood. The fact that twenty folks count this as their home office shows that we have indeed provided an anchor of sorts.

Of course, with twenty different people working in and out of this building life is more complex, with more relationships and all. But it is a good sort of complexity. A rich complexity of personal interaction - and that does not mention all the volunteers for each of the organizations that are in and out of the building on a regular basis. And then the church meetings. And the meetings of the Community Caring Conference, and the meetings of the Lights ON for Learning.

You know, with all of this there are indeed more cars in the parking lot. On a regular basis.

Count our blessings at Thanksgiving!

We are here in Minneapolis for Thanksgiving at our daughter's apartment and I read USA Today (November 25, 2009) at the motel. You know the section where there are little news stories for each state? Well the post for Iowa is as follows:

Des Moines - Authorities said the church where more than two dozen parishioners were sickened had used gasoline generators for months to power the building. Authorities said fumes from the generators flowed back into the building on Sunday as a choir rehearsed, injuring 26 children and two adults. The church used the generators because it owed $3,200 in utility bills.

Puts a new light on the Stewardship drive.