November 14 2010
The little tiny lady sitting outside of church waiting for her daughter to pick her up said she was 96. Little Lilly, who sat behind me during mass, looked to be about five. Her little sister, who looked just like her was about 4 years younger. She was a bit vocal during mass. Very little crying but letting her voice be heard – like everyone else was doing I guess she figured.
And between 96 and one were folk of all ages, shapes, sizes and colors at the 160th anniversary mass for good old St. Malachy’s.
The day before the Jesu Caritas prayer group that meets there the 2nd Saturday of each month, turned our annual retreat into a one-day 12-step workshop/class. We actually did the steps during the retreat. First off we admitted we were powerless at making our lives all that we want them to be; secondly we expressed our belief that a Power Greater than ourselves could get us closer to our ideal. For step three we decided to ally our will with that Power; in four and five we identified and then shared with our assigned sharing partner, the character defects that were keeping us from a more intimate connection with that Power. In six and seven we were ready to have those defects removed and asked God to do it. In eight we listed the people we’d resented or harmed with our actions; we then agreed to do step nine by going out to make amends to those people. We professed to do step ten in the future – making amends immediately if we got off track. And having cleared a lot of the blocks between us and God by doing this moral housecleaning, our step eleven prayer for knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry that out, will be more likely to get through. And in step 12, we said we’d take this message to another human being.
The 12 steps really are that simple.
And so St Malachy’s heads into her 160th year. Our mission statement includes helping others in need. By being willing to go through these steps, my friends from the prayer group were open enough to try something a bit different in their acting out on that particular mission. Father Lawrence was good enough to allow us to try something that maybe has never been done before…a dedicated crew of non-addicted people working the 12 steps of recovery.
Grace abounded on much of the St M campus this weekend. May all of us find a way to achieve the mission of God’s will for us as we go about the nuts and bolts of living in a world that seemingly takes us in the opposite direction. May we continue to cherish and respect our elders and the wisdom they impart, and may we guide our young to ingest the grace, love and guidance of a church and a parish that is a beacon for us all.
Information about Jim McGovern’s book (12 Steps to Change Your World) and step class can be found at ‘12stepsforall.com’.
Sunday, December 12, 2010
The Intolerance Antidote
August 29, 2010
On September 25 of this year, as many as 10,000 walkers and supporters will descend on Philadelphia’s Penn’s Landing for the 5th annual Recovery Walk. The television network A & E is a co-sponsor this year and they will be sponsoring delegates from each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia. Each of these delegates will have over ten years since they stopped imbibing a substance that was making their lives unmanageable. We hope to have a total of 500 over ten year sober folk in what we are calling the Honor Guard. This Guard will rim the path of the walkers, encouraging them as they start the brief walk from Front to 5th and Market St.
Among the glories of the 12 step fellowships is their insistence that the Higher Power that can and does deliver us from the tombs of our addictions be one of our own understanding. A Muslim, a Jew, a Catholic, a Protestant, a Buddhist, Hindu…even an atheist or an agnostic can sit side-by-side in a 12 step meeting without any cause or reason for dissension about belief systems. The eminently practical spiritually inspired modifications of behavior the program suggests, not only delivers us from lives of torment and dysfunction, but also to lives of happiness and fulfillment. And there is absolutely no reason one has to have an addiction problem to work the 12-step program. Being powerless over a substance and/or how our individual world was going was the incentive most of us in recovery had to take this spiritual path. But as I look at our world bereft with suicide bombings and the vandalizing and protesting the building of houses of worship, of a cab driver being stabbed merely because of his faith, of a rally in Washington where as many as 10,000 people go to support a fanatically proud and vocal proponent of divisiveness and intolerance, it seems our world collectively is approaching the individual bottom the addict must hit before he is willing to change.
So what of these steps? Where did thy come from? Well ironically enough as this huge throng of recovering people are about to descend on Philadelphia the City of Brotherly Love, 102 years ago a Lutheran minister from Allentown, Pa. found himself in a church in England where a female descendant of William Penn, the founder of Philadelphia, was giving a sermon on the cross of Christ. This minister named Frank Buchman heard those words and knew he had resentments in his life that he had to give up…that they stood between him and He who was hung from that cross.
So to the six board members who had pulled the plug on his wonderful projects for the poor and homeless of Philadelphia, Frank Buchman sent apology letters. His realization that in order to change or help others, one must first purge himself thus became a cornerstone of a vibrant, active spirituality that really would change the lives of people from all over the world. The self-cleansing was necessary in Buchman’s scheme so that the flow of God-given guidance would not be blocked. Daily quiet time and guidance would become something near as central to his life as was breathing. And very early on, his guidance told him it was necessary to work one-on-one with people - that the time had come for the preacher man to come down from the pulpit. A la Francis from Assisi and John Wesley from England, Buchman knew that it was people and not congregations who had to experience the wonder and love of Christ.
Buchman’s program began to grow in popularity and numbers and by the mid-20’s they would finally get a name – they’d be called the Oxford Group. That was their name when, in 1931, a wealthy New Englander named Roland Hazzard with a crippling alcohol addiction, after having relapsed after being treated for near a year by his psychiatrist, Carl Jung was told that he was hopeless unless he had a life-changing spiritual experience. Hazzard joined the Oxfords because that was exactly what they were selling. That was still their name when in 1934 a drunk named Ebby Thatcher was spared a jail sentence if he agreed to go through the Oxford Group program Hazzard and a friend laid out for him. Ebby then followed the same Oxford suit they had - that to keep this thing you have to take the message to another - and the other that he found was a New York drunk named Bill Wilson. On December 11, 1934, Wilson took his final drink.
Near 6 months later, Wilson’s first success in helping get someone else sober would take place in Akron, Ohio. The second drunk was named Bob Smith and although he’d been in the Oxford Group for a couple of years, until a fellow who shared the same affliction wrapped the Oxford program around the admission of powerlessness to that bottle, it had done him no good. By the late 30’s, the alcoholics would break from the Oxfords and they took the essence of the program they were leaving and would make it the more concrete and workable 12 steps. And as Wilson and Smith and their followers would take to the byways and highways pulling drunks out of the gutter, the Oxfords would become Moral Rearmament. As MRA tried to instill in the politicos of their time the necessity to re arm morally, though his efforts were hailed by many as positive, his fellowship began to slip in popularity.
Still Buchman and his group had great successes. They were the main player in resolving a crippling miners strike in England in the late 1940’s. Same was true for a railroad strike in Germany. Their concept was that in practicing absolute, honesty, purity, unselfishness and love in our dealing with the other, optimal outcomes would be achieved. But perhaps his greatest triumph was his influence on a lady named Madame Irene Laurie who had been one of the fiercest French resistance fighters in WW II. As she was about to walk out of a post-war peace talk because she heard someone speaking German there, Buchman stopped her and begged the question of what would happen to any chance of peace if she were to leave. The story has it she went to her room for two days to pray and meditate. She then opened her speech by telling the German people she apologized for her hatred of them. Willy Schmidt, the first post WW II prime minister of France said her speech more than anything else, opened the way for the post war peace in Western Europe.
Funny the difference in the speeches coming out of Lower Manhattan. On the news last Sunday night they had about five minutes of coverage of the people protesting the Manhattan mosque and then an almost parenthetic mention and 20-second stop of the pro-mosque crowd protesting about a block away. The medium is the message indeed. It is political now. All over right wing zealots are taking primary spots from less radical Republicans. Doubtless even more of the already waning progressiveness will be seeping out of the Democrats. One has to read the wind that is being inherited by the intolerant if he wants to keep his seat. When keeping that seat, hoarding what we have, and blindly stuffing our appetites became more important than honesty, unselfishness, purity and love, the fabric of our government and our society began to unravel.
The world was a different place 60 years ago as the 12-step movement, especially Alcoholics Anonymous, was spreading to every corner of the globe. And even though Buchman’s group’s influence and effectiveness that had been so effective that he was on the cover of Time magazine in the mid-50’s, by the late 60’s it was practically gone. His major failing, had to do again, with that ever present evil called pride. Buchman did not set up a system like AA’s 12 traditions so the fellowship would lose their dependence on their leaders. Some bad policy decisions in the 60’s and the unfortunate premature death of his hand-picked successor, a brilliant British author named Peter Howard, had MRA almost disappear from the map.
However a lot of MRA work was still being done and around 2000 the group re-emerged as Initiatives of Change. They are now headquartered in Washington DC and Richmond, Va. and are doing great interfaith work all over the world.
Among the reasons AA outlived MRA was precisely because they avoided politics and outside issues. But the essential aim of the steps and the program is to discern and then do as the Creator wills. What is going on in Lower Manhattan and the Middle East and a lot of other places in the world is for certain far removed from the will of God. To utilize a proven method to effect freedom, love, honesty and open-mindedness in a world in such desperate need for exactly those things, is certainly the will of a Higher Power of my own understanding.
----
Recovery. For a person, for a world.
In a little sightseeing brochure I put together for the delegates to the Recovery Walk I mention Penn Treaty Park where William Penn, in 1682 signed a treaty with the Delaware Indians. Under Penn’s statue is the following quote.
He, who is not governed by God, will be ruled by tyrants.
The tyrants of greed, prejudice, fanaticism, intolerance, hate, ignorance, inequity, poverty, disillusion, and addiction govern far too much of America and our world in this third century after Christ.
There is a better way. Please God that we find it.
James F McGovern Jr.
Jim McGovern’s website 12stepsforall.com has information regarding a 12 step class for addicts and non-addicts. His book Twelve Steps to Change a World is available on the site.
On September 25 of this year, as many as 10,000 walkers and supporters will descend on Philadelphia’s Penn’s Landing for the 5th annual Recovery Walk. The television network A & E is a co-sponsor this year and they will be sponsoring delegates from each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia. Each of these delegates will have over ten years since they stopped imbibing a substance that was making their lives unmanageable. We hope to have a total of 500 over ten year sober folk in what we are calling the Honor Guard. This Guard will rim the path of the walkers, encouraging them as they start the brief walk from Front to 5th and Market St.
Among the glories of the 12 step fellowships is their insistence that the Higher Power that can and does deliver us from the tombs of our addictions be one of our own understanding. A Muslim, a Jew, a Catholic, a Protestant, a Buddhist, Hindu…even an atheist or an agnostic can sit side-by-side in a 12 step meeting without any cause or reason for dissension about belief systems. The eminently practical spiritually inspired modifications of behavior the program suggests, not only delivers us from lives of torment and dysfunction, but also to lives of happiness and fulfillment. And there is absolutely no reason one has to have an addiction problem to work the 12-step program. Being powerless over a substance and/or how our individual world was going was the incentive most of us in recovery had to take this spiritual path. But as I look at our world bereft with suicide bombings and the vandalizing and protesting the building of houses of worship, of a cab driver being stabbed merely because of his faith, of a rally in Washington where as many as 10,000 people go to support a fanatically proud and vocal proponent of divisiveness and intolerance, it seems our world collectively is approaching the individual bottom the addict must hit before he is willing to change.
So what of these steps? Where did thy come from? Well ironically enough as this huge throng of recovering people are about to descend on Philadelphia the City of Brotherly Love, 102 years ago a Lutheran minister from Allentown, Pa. found himself in a church in England where a female descendant of William Penn, the founder of Philadelphia, was giving a sermon on the cross of Christ. This minister named Frank Buchman heard those words and knew he had resentments in his life that he had to give up…that they stood between him and He who was hung from that cross.
So to the six board members who had pulled the plug on his wonderful projects for the poor and homeless of Philadelphia, Frank Buchman sent apology letters. His realization that in order to change or help others, one must first purge himself thus became a cornerstone of a vibrant, active spirituality that really would change the lives of people from all over the world. The self-cleansing was necessary in Buchman’s scheme so that the flow of God-given guidance would not be blocked. Daily quiet time and guidance would become something near as central to his life as was breathing. And very early on, his guidance told him it was necessary to work one-on-one with people - that the time had come for the preacher man to come down from the pulpit. A la Francis from Assisi and John Wesley from England, Buchman knew that it was people and not congregations who had to experience the wonder and love of Christ.
Buchman’s program began to grow in popularity and numbers and by the mid-20’s they would finally get a name – they’d be called the Oxford Group. That was their name when, in 1931, a wealthy New Englander named Roland Hazzard with a crippling alcohol addiction, after having relapsed after being treated for near a year by his psychiatrist, Carl Jung was told that he was hopeless unless he had a life-changing spiritual experience. Hazzard joined the Oxfords because that was exactly what they were selling. That was still their name when in 1934 a drunk named Ebby Thatcher was spared a jail sentence if he agreed to go through the Oxford Group program Hazzard and a friend laid out for him. Ebby then followed the same Oxford suit they had - that to keep this thing you have to take the message to another - and the other that he found was a New York drunk named Bill Wilson. On December 11, 1934, Wilson took his final drink.
Near 6 months later, Wilson’s first success in helping get someone else sober would take place in Akron, Ohio. The second drunk was named Bob Smith and although he’d been in the Oxford Group for a couple of years, until a fellow who shared the same affliction wrapped the Oxford program around the admission of powerlessness to that bottle, it had done him no good. By the late 30’s, the alcoholics would break from the Oxfords and they took the essence of the program they were leaving and would make it the more concrete and workable 12 steps. And as Wilson and Smith and their followers would take to the byways and highways pulling drunks out of the gutter, the Oxfords would become Moral Rearmament. As MRA tried to instill in the politicos of their time the necessity to re arm morally, though his efforts were hailed by many as positive, his fellowship began to slip in popularity.
Still Buchman and his group had great successes. They were the main player in resolving a crippling miners strike in England in the late 1940’s. Same was true for a railroad strike in Germany. Their concept was that in practicing absolute, honesty, purity, unselfishness and love in our dealing with the other, optimal outcomes would be achieved. But perhaps his greatest triumph was his influence on a lady named Madame Irene Laurie who had been one of the fiercest French resistance fighters in WW II. As she was about to walk out of a post-war peace talk because she heard someone speaking German there, Buchman stopped her and begged the question of what would happen to any chance of peace if she were to leave. The story has it she went to her room for two days to pray and meditate. She then opened her speech by telling the German people she apologized for her hatred of them. Willy Schmidt, the first post WW II prime minister of France said her speech more than anything else, opened the way for the post war peace in Western Europe.
Funny the difference in the speeches coming out of Lower Manhattan. On the news last Sunday night they had about five minutes of coverage of the people protesting the Manhattan mosque and then an almost parenthetic mention and 20-second stop of the pro-mosque crowd protesting about a block away. The medium is the message indeed. It is political now. All over right wing zealots are taking primary spots from less radical Republicans. Doubtless even more of the already waning progressiveness will be seeping out of the Democrats. One has to read the wind that is being inherited by the intolerant if he wants to keep his seat. When keeping that seat, hoarding what we have, and blindly stuffing our appetites became more important than honesty, unselfishness, purity and love, the fabric of our government and our society began to unravel.
The world was a different place 60 years ago as the 12-step movement, especially Alcoholics Anonymous, was spreading to every corner of the globe. And even though Buchman’s group’s influence and effectiveness that had been so effective that he was on the cover of Time magazine in the mid-50’s, by the late 60’s it was practically gone. His major failing, had to do again, with that ever present evil called pride. Buchman did not set up a system like AA’s 12 traditions so the fellowship would lose their dependence on their leaders. Some bad policy decisions in the 60’s and the unfortunate premature death of his hand-picked successor, a brilliant British author named Peter Howard, had MRA almost disappear from the map.
However a lot of MRA work was still being done and around 2000 the group re-emerged as Initiatives of Change. They are now headquartered in Washington DC and Richmond, Va. and are doing great interfaith work all over the world.
Among the reasons AA outlived MRA was precisely because they avoided politics and outside issues. But the essential aim of the steps and the program is to discern and then do as the Creator wills. What is going on in Lower Manhattan and the Middle East and a lot of other places in the world is for certain far removed from the will of God. To utilize a proven method to effect freedom, love, honesty and open-mindedness in a world in such desperate need for exactly those things, is certainly the will of a Higher Power of my own understanding.
----
Recovery. For a person, for a world.
In a little sightseeing brochure I put together for the delegates to the Recovery Walk I mention Penn Treaty Park where William Penn, in 1682 signed a treaty with the Delaware Indians. Under Penn’s statue is the following quote.
He, who is not governed by God, will be ruled by tyrants.
The tyrants of greed, prejudice, fanaticism, intolerance, hate, ignorance, inequity, poverty, disillusion, and addiction govern far too much of America and our world in this third century after Christ.
There is a better way. Please God that we find it.
James F McGovern Jr.
Jim McGovern’s website 12stepsforall.com has information regarding a 12 step class for addicts and non-addicts. His book Twelve Steps to Change a World is available on the site.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Rain, Rain go Away
April 25, 2010
So another rainy day scheduled for the peace walk – only this year they’re talking heavy, deluge kind of rain.
Rain, rain go away,
Come again some other day.
Funny how things roll together. I’ve been thinking about the Joan of Arc legend and how a seemingly Divinely inspired change in the wind allowed her army to cross a river so she could attack and defeat an English army to begin her successful career as a soldier for God and for France. And it just so happens that on my desk are a couple of church bulletins from the St Joan of Arc church that, for the last two months, has been a weekly stop off point for a client of mine. A very nice guy but a chronic relapser his six months sober now have him over two hurdles he’s not been able to pass for a long time. And since the beginning of Lent, his finally acting on a suggestion I’ve been making to him since the fall, that he go to church, maybe is part of the reason. The pastor now knows him, calls him by name each week, and is a cool enough guy to have the mass goers each week write down a prayer and share it with a stranger, so you’ll have a person you do not know, praying for you.
And this little practice, reminded me the little ‘get to know you’ questions we put on the back of the walk itinerary to pose to someone you do not know as we walk from spot to spot.
So it goes. I’ve already gotten a couple of nice responses from members of the walk committee about my e-mail that we maybe pray to St Joan of Arc for a change in the scheduled weather this Sunday. Doubtless those specific prayers will not be answered. But the way I look at it, prayers are never wasted. Doubtless the reality that is now Joan of Arc is getting a little charge that some folk from a town called Philadelphia in a year called 2010 are calling on her for some help. Great saints, I am sure are never stingy with grace and regardless of what the skies bring down this coming Sunday, the beauty, wonder and splendor of our efforts, now will have another French-flavored source of grace flowing with us.
So this will be the 4th straight year it’s rained. But the weather has done nothing to dampen the spirit and benevolence of the walk. God is good and in our efforts to have people of all faiths and shapes and sizes walk together in harmony and peace, whether it’s sunny or rainy, His love will be shining down on us.
----
And so now the walk is over. The umbrella I wore on my belt, never was taken off. The windshield wipers that were on as I headed to mass this morning were off by the time I was driving to the walk. They went back on as I headed home afterwards. The walk itself was not only dry, it was a triumph. A little smaller turnout this year, the usual delays holding up the schedule, some scheduled speakers and singers pulling out at the last moment all added to the intrigue, but overall it was a huge success. After the very warm introduction by the pastor at the Hickman Temple African-Methodist-Episcopalian church that was at our first stop, a Native American woman played a wonderful song on her flute. The slower first half that was about remembering our ancestors and the second faster part, was about we should be grateful for the graces we’ve been given. Long before the white man brought his agendas and religions to this land, the natives had a warm and wonderful Father-Spirit, Mother-Earth spirituality that is something we surely need to tap if we want to stop the butchering of this earth that has been going on for far too many years. The alternative is our eventual self-destruction.
Another first on this year’s walk was a beautiful dance routine by a group of Eastern Indian classic dancers. They performed at the Calvary Center for Culture and Community that is the home for about a half-dozen different faith traditions and was our last stop. There we again were graced by a mesmerizing song and music by the Sikh community. The youngster belting out his parts reminded me of a young Michael Jackson. The Imam from our home mosque, Al Aqsa, led the Pm Salat prayers before he chanted his annual beautiful message from the Koran.
The stirring Buddhist chant at St Frances de Sales Church and some beautiful poetry by youngsters from the Walk the Walk program, were wrapped around a couple of wonderful songs where the entire congregation joined in. Leaving there seeing the people filter out, I was overwhelmed with this feeling of comfort and warmth – that this event is a very special thing.
----
Well near 11:00 PM now. The rain is pelting hard on my window here. A while back there was even some thunder. The rain still came, it just held off for as long as it had to. The drudgery that is Monday morning will probably seem a bit worse tomorrow with the rain coming down. Such is life.
Something about to Om-kind of chanting we did today, made my insides almost feel like they were vibrating. I remember how vibrating was exactly how I described the feeling the first time I heard the Imam chant in our first stop on our first Peace Walk seven years ago. The vibrations, the lovely flute music to our ancestors, the peace-promoting passages of the Torah, Koran and the St Francis prayer today, to me were about Unity…amongst ourselves and all that came before us.
I suspect I’ll have a fresh St Joan of Arc weekly bulletin handed to me tomorrow morning. The grace of Joan for sure, along with that of countless Muslim, Jewish, Native, Eastern and Christian saints, all did I invite into my being today through the prayers and the chants and the songs. How much I allow that to be my driving force through the mundane Mondays, etc of my life, will tell the tale of both the happiness and success I will know.
My guides are many-splendored and many-sided. It is up to me to follow them.
So another rainy day scheduled for the peace walk – only this year they’re talking heavy, deluge kind of rain.
Rain, rain go away,
Come again some other day.
Funny how things roll together. I’ve been thinking about the Joan of Arc legend and how a seemingly Divinely inspired change in the wind allowed her army to cross a river so she could attack and defeat an English army to begin her successful career as a soldier for God and for France. And it just so happens that on my desk are a couple of church bulletins from the St Joan of Arc church that, for the last two months, has been a weekly stop off point for a client of mine. A very nice guy but a chronic relapser his six months sober now have him over two hurdles he’s not been able to pass for a long time. And since the beginning of Lent, his finally acting on a suggestion I’ve been making to him since the fall, that he go to church, maybe is part of the reason. The pastor now knows him, calls him by name each week, and is a cool enough guy to have the mass goers each week write down a prayer and share it with a stranger, so you’ll have a person you do not know, praying for you.
And this little practice, reminded me the little ‘get to know you’ questions we put on the back of the walk itinerary to pose to someone you do not know as we walk from spot to spot.
So it goes. I’ve already gotten a couple of nice responses from members of the walk committee about my e-mail that we maybe pray to St Joan of Arc for a change in the scheduled weather this Sunday. Doubtless those specific prayers will not be answered. But the way I look at it, prayers are never wasted. Doubtless the reality that is now Joan of Arc is getting a little charge that some folk from a town called Philadelphia in a year called 2010 are calling on her for some help. Great saints, I am sure are never stingy with grace and regardless of what the skies bring down this coming Sunday, the beauty, wonder and splendor of our efforts, now will have another French-flavored source of grace flowing with us.
So this will be the 4th straight year it’s rained. But the weather has done nothing to dampen the spirit and benevolence of the walk. God is good and in our efforts to have people of all faiths and shapes and sizes walk together in harmony and peace, whether it’s sunny or rainy, His love will be shining down on us.
----
And so now the walk is over. The umbrella I wore on my belt, never was taken off. The windshield wipers that were on as I headed to mass this morning were off by the time I was driving to the walk. They went back on as I headed home afterwards. The walk itself was not only dry, it was a triumph. A little smaller turnout this year, the usual delays holding up the schedule, some scheduled speakers and singers pulling out at the last moment all added to the intrigue, but overall it was a huge success. After the very warm introduction by the pastor at the Hickman Temple African-Methodist-Episcopalian church that was at our first stop, a Native American woman played a wonderful song on her flute. The slower first half that was about remembering our ancestors and the second faster part, was about we should be grateful for the graces we’ve been given. Long before the white man brought his agendas and religions to this land, the natives had a warm and wonderful Father-Spirit, Mother-Earth spirituality that is something we surely need to tap if we want to stop the butchering of this earth that has been going on for far too many years. The alternative is our eventual self-destruction.
Another first on this year’s walk was a beautiful dance routine by a group of Eastern Indian classic dancers. They performed at the Calvary Center for Culture and Community that is the home for about a half-dozen different faith traditions and was our last stop. There we again were graced by a mesmerizing song and music by the Sikh community. The youngster belting out his parts reminded me of a young Michael Jackson. The Imam from our home mosque, Al Aqsa, led the Pm Salat prayers before he chanted his annual beautiful message from the Koran.
The stirring Buddhist chant at St Frances de Sales Church and some beautiful poetry by youngsters from the Walk the Walk program, were wrapped around a couple of wonderful songs where the entire congregation joined in. Leaving there seeing the people filter out, I was overwhelmed with this feeling of comfort and warmth – that this event is a very special thing.
----
Well near 11:00 PM now. The rain is pelting hard on my window here. A while back there was even some thunder. The rain still came, it just held off for as long as it had to. The drudgery that is Monday morning will probably seem a bit worse tomorrow with the rain coming down. Such is life.
Something about to Om-kind of chanting we did today, made my insides almost feel like they were vibrating. I remember how vibrating was exactly how I described the feeling the first time I heard the Imam chant in our first stop on our first Peace Walk seven years ago. The vibrations, the lovely flute music to our ancestors, the peace-promoting passages of the Torah, Koran and the St Francis prayer today, to me were about Unity…amongst ourselves and all that came before us.
I suspect I’ll have a fresh St Joan of Arc weekly bulletin handed to me tomorrow morning. The grace of Joan for sure, along with that of countless Muslim, Jewish, Native, Eastern and Christian saints, all did I invite into my being today through the prayers and the chants and the songs. How much I allow that to be my driving force through the mundane Mondays, etc of my life, will tell the tale of both the happiness and success I will know.
My guides are many-splendored and many-sided. It is up to me to follow them.
Friday, January 29, 2010
Taking it to the Streets
January 18, 2010
Certainly different crowds on the Sunday and Monday of the weekend we honor the memory of Martin Luther King. The crowds as different as Sunday’s miserable windy-pouring down rain was from Monday’s dry out and eventual sunshine.
The weather however, did not keep down the crowd at all at the massive cathedral of Sts Peter and Paul where 13 priests were made monsignors. There were near as many people standing as were sitting in the chock-full pews.
Monday’s crowd, a Martin Luther King Day event where we walked from 20th and Cecil B Moore for about a mile to the massive Girard College, was a lot smaller. Particularly when a large portion of the crowd got up and left in the middle of the event. And they missed some very powerful and inspiring speakers. I bought a CD from a young gentleman who really got the place a rockin…quite a few others did the same thing.
‘God is good’, ‘we need change’ ‘when I say doctor, you say King’ were some of the chants we shouted out during the walk. And many of the speakers touched on the same theme that it was the God in us and in Dr King that is/was behind the changing and the progress and the effort and the dream. One guy mimicked King and quoted the whole
“I have a dream” speech. And most of the speakers grew up on the mean streets of North Philadelphia and had seen valleys deep and deeper before turning their lives around and making it to whatever mountaintop they’d achieved thus far. Several speakers railed against the ‘make babies and run’ syndrome that has torn apart the traditional family in the black and poor neighborhoods. As sign up sheets for volunteer opportunities were passed around several speakers spoke of being either part of the solution or of the problem. One speaker stressed to change the outside we need to change our insides first.
One thing the Sunday program did have over the Monday one was brevity. The speeches were fewer and even with the psalm reading/singing the entire event took less than an hour. And the absolutely sumptuous reception afterwards at the Sheraton that our pastor and his priest friend combined to put together must have cost a bundle. And I do not think church money went to pay for it either. That difference to the few folk who got donuts and coffee in the basement of the Girard College chapel before the speeches was probably the most glaring difference between the two events.
The guy from whom I bought the CD mentioned how some of the clergy of King’s time complained when he called for a march or a boycott on Easter Sunday – and that they wanted to be in church that day. My man had the people chanting ‘bring the church into the streets’ as he belted out his rap rift. I guess if there is any criticism of the Catholic Church it is that it does not make it to the streets enough…that for the vast majority of the people it is one hour each Sunday and then on with your life. You don’t see too many clipboards being passed or getting filled up in a lot of Sunday morning (or Saturday evening) services. Sad thing was there weren’t all that many getting filled up at the King event either.
Taking the churches into the street. I think of the St Francis Inn where the homeless of Kensington get a meal each day. On one of those real bitter day a week or so ago, driving down Kensington Ave, a guy I know who’s connected to a smaller church called ‘Rock of Faith’ was dishing out food right up at Somerset and Kensington where the drugs are as much a part of the landscape as is the roar of the Frankford El.
Most of the walkers were from a recovery program called ODAAT…but as the recovery rate in the 12-step rooms gets smaller and smaller, I wondered how many of these ‘one day at a time’ ers will eventually fall back into their respective valleys. I wondered how many babies had gotten made by the guy and the gal smooching in the row in front of me. When you have very little a warm body can brighten up your day a bundle. Alas the hook-up is so prevalent in those rooms of recovery it is often referred to as the 13th step. The dilution of the spiritual message, of the Higher Power reach out to the hand of the other, for sure is the major reason for the vast recovery rate drop off. People frequently don’t do the steps anymore; they read them and talk about them and engage in the same selfish behaviors and wonder why they fall. My feelings about how much ‘in the streets’ good could transpire if even a small percentage of those folks filling the cathedral worked the 12 steps, was tempered the next day by my realization of how poor is the example of many of the people in the 12-step fellowships. Why engage in something that doesn’t work anymore?
But as the priests and deacons and bishops and even a couple of cardinals, procession-ed by after the ceremony, I did a good job of suppressing my cynicism and distaste for the and pomp and circumstance of it all and was grateful for these men who gave their lives to God and to truly lost souls like me who found some pretty open minds and some genuine care when I came back through those church doors near 18 years ago. My valley had been a deep one and the insistence of my recovery program that I’d need a Higher Power in my life if I wanted to escape, nudged me along. Riding the waves of the New Age spirituality served me well in those early days, but repeatedly crashing on the jagged rocks of relapse convinced me I needed more effort in my spiritual quest. By the time I cleared the relapses some 9+ years ago I’d taken the ‘sort of’ off my Catholic professing as I was no longer embarrassed to admit I was back in the fold.
“We Shall Overcome” a portion of the crowd began singing that as we neared Girard College. One of the speakers talked about how in 1964 MLK himself had held a rally outside the big walls and the locked iron gate of the segregated ‘white’s only’ school.
But I also could not help but think of the ‘men only’ restriction on the ceremony of the night before.
A few years back men, women, blacks, whites, Christians, Muslims, Jews and whoever sang that song together at the Christian/Catholic stop of our annual Interfaith Peace Walk. Today was the beginning of the week of prayer for Christian Unity.
God is good. If only we can tear down the walls that keep us from God and from each other…
Certainly different crowds on the Sunday and Monday of the weekend we honor the memory of Martin Luther King. The crowds as different as Sunday’s miserable windy-pouring down rain was from Monday’s dry out and eventual sunshine.
The weather however, did not keep down the crowd at all at the massive cathedral of Sts Peter and Paul where 13 priests were made monsignors. There were near as many people standing as were sitting in the chock-full pews.
Monday’s crowd, a Martin Luther King Day event where we walked from 20th and Cecil B Moore for about a mile to the massive Girard College, was a lot smaller. Particularly when a large portion of the crowd got up and left in the middle of the event. And they missed some very powerful and inspiring speakers. I bought a CD from a young gentleman who really got the place a rockin…quite a few others did the same thing.
‘God is good’, ‘we need change’ ‘when I say doctor, you say King’ were some of the chants we shouted out during the walk. And many of the speakers touched on the same theme that it was the God in us and in Dr King that is/was behind the changing and the progress and the effort and the dream. One guy mimicked King and quoted the whole
“I have a dream” speech. And most of the speakers grew up on the mean streets of North Philadelphia and had seen valleys deep and deeper before turning their lives around and making it to whatever mountaintop they’d achieved thus far. Several speakers railed against the ‘make babies and run’ syndrome that has torn apart the traditional family in the black and poor neighborhoods. As sign up sheets for volunteer opportunities were passed around several speakers spoke of being either part of the solution or of the problem. One speaker stressed to change the outside we need to change our insides first.
One thing the Sunday program did have over the Monday one was brevity. The speeches were fewer and even with the psalm reading/singing the entire event took less than an hour. And the absolutely sumptuous reception afterwards at the Sheraton that our pastor and his priest friend combined to put together must have cost a bundle. And I do not think church money went to pay for it either. That difference to the few folk who got donuts and coffee in the basement of the Girard College chapel before the speeches was probably the most glaring difference between the two events.
The guy from whom I bought the CD mentioned how some of the clergy of King’s time complained when he called for a march or a boycott on Easter Sunday – and that they wanted to be in church that day. My man had the people chanting ‘bring the church into the streets’ as he belted out his rap rift. I guess if there is any criticism of the Catholic Church it is that it does not make it to the streets enough…that for the vast majority of the people it is one hour each Sunday and then on with your life. You don’t see too many clipboards being passed or getting filled up in a lot of Sunday morning (or Saturday evening) services. Sad thing was there weren’t all that many getting filled up at the King event either.
Taking the churches into the street. I think of the St Francis Inn where the homeless of Kensington get a meal each day. On one of those real bitter day a week or so ago, driving down Kensington Ave, a guy I know who’s connected to a smaller church called ‘Rock of Faith’ was dishing out food right up at Somerset and Kensington where the drugs are as much a part of the landscape as is the roar of the Frankford El.
Most of the walkers were from a recovery program called ODAAT…but as the recovery rate in the 12-step rooms gets smaller and smaller, I wondered how many of these ‘one day at a time’ ers will eventually fall back into their respective valleys. I wondered how many babies had gotten made by the guy and the gal smooching in the row in front of me. When you have very little a warm body can brighten up your day a bundle. Alas the hook-up is so prevalent in those rooms of recovery it is often referred to as the 13th step. The dilution of the spiritual message, of the Higher Power reach out to the hand of the other, for sure is the major reason for the vast recovery rate drop off. People frequently don’t do the steps anymore; they read them and talk about them and engage in the same selfish behaviors and wonder why they fall. My feelings about how much ‘in the streets’ good could transpire if even a small percentage of those folks filling the cathedral worked the 12 steps, was tempered the next day by my realization of how poor is the example of many of the people in the 12-step fellowships. Why engage in something that doesn’t work anymore?
But as the priests and deacons and bishops and even a couple of cardinals, procession-ed by after the ceremony, I did a good job of suppressing my cynicism and distaste for the and pomp and circumstance of it all and was grateful for these men who gave their lives to God and to truly lost souls like me who found some pretty open minds and some genuine care when I came back through those church doors near 18 years ago. My valley had been a deep one and the insistence of my recovery program that I’d need a Higher Power in my life if I wanted to escape, nudged me along. Riding the waves of the New Age spirituality served me well in those early days, but repeatedly crashing on the jagged rocks of relapse convinced me I needed more effort in my spiritual quest. By the time I cleared the relapses some 9+ years ago I’d taken the ‘sort of’ off my Catholic professing as I was no longer embarrassed to admit I was back in the fold.
“We Shall Overcome” a portion of the crowd began singing that as we neared Girard College. One of the speakers talked about how in 1964 MLK himself had held a rally outside the big walls and the locked iron gate of the segregated ‘white’s only’ school.
But I also could not help but think of the ‘men only’ restriction on the ceremony of the night before.
A few years back men, women, blacks, whites, Christians, Muslims, Jews and whoever sang that song together at the Christian/Catholic stop of our annual Interfaith Peace Walk. Today was the beginning of the week of prayer for Christian Unity.
God is good. If only we can tear down the walls that keep us from God and from each other…
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