Terry Hershey

In This Issue:

• If we have not Love...
• Words to Live By
• Poems
• Letters and emails
• Sabbath Moment

Listen to Terry read featured articles on our website.

FEATURE ARTICLE
by Terry Hershey

If we have not love...

We don't have peace because we forget that we belong to each other.
Mother Teresa

The way we are with each other is the truest test of our faith. How I deal with normal people in their normal confusion on a normal day may be better indication of my reverence for life than the anti-abortion sticker on the bumper of my car.
Brennan Manning

We can't do great things, but we can do little things with great love.
Mother Teresa

Man is the only religious animal. . .that loves his neighbor as himself, and cuts his throat if this theology isn't strait.
Mark Twain

The ultimate goal of human life is a community of love in the embrace of the Triune God. Any action or institution that seeks to eliminate, assimilate, and dominate or simply abandon the other - any exclusionary practice - is sinful; it transgresses against the goal for which God has created humanity and there against the will of God. Because Christians believe that God is love, they must believe that exclusion is a fundamental sin.
Miraslov Volf

Within the New Testament itself, for those early followers of Jesus Christ who were all Jews, the first cathartic decision came in relation to gentiles, the uncircumcised. Since then the Christian story has been one of prejudice being overcome step by step: slaves, Jews, science, single mothers, children born outside marriage, people in interchurch marriages, victims of suicide, the downfall of apartheid, divorcees, women (first in decision-making in the Church and then in the ordained ministry); standing up to racism. . .Christian history is full of people who, from being on the outside at one time, have, through a change of heart of the Church, found themselves on the inside of the story. At the time, such changes were, what the Roman Catholic theologian James Allison calls, "ruptures of the impossible."
Archbishop of Canterbury

There's a light in this world, a healing spirit more powerful than any darkness we may encounter. We sometimes lose sight of this force when there is suffering, too much pain. Then suddenly the spirit will emerge through the lives of ordinary people who hear a call, and answer in extraordinary ways.
From the film 'Mother Teresa'

God loves infidels, idiots and heathens. This is a radical hospitality.

I leave Antigua, Guatemala, before dawn. The narrow streets are empty, the light from the few lamps still lit, gives the cobbles an old and three-dimensional texture, exaggerating its antique countenance. It would be easy to believe the year is 1550.

I smile, enjoying the make-believe, but it is interrupted by a passing shuttle van, ferrying "touristas y maletas" to Guatemala City Airport. With the exception of the occasional van-rocketing through the streets speed-limit-be-dammed - Antigua sleeps.

Three days before, the streets teamed, the city - literally - full, all of us here for "Semana Santa," celebration of Holy Week. Back on Vashon, I would be nodding off at Good Friday service, looking forward to the more upbeat cheer in Sunday's Service, followed by an afternoon with friends, all of us hiding Easter eggs for our children. (I'm still not good with the explanation. You know, the connection between the resurrection of a Jewish carpenter's son, and a large, odd looking Rabbit who takes sadistic pleasure - or is it the parents? - in hiding painted chicken eggs, some festive, some garish, all followed by a large meal where everyone eats themselves into a late afternoon stupor.)

Although there were occasional events and processions throughout the week here in Antigua, Good Friday is the nadir, the culmination of emotional preparation and expectation. It begins late Thursday evening and continues through the entire night, as family, friends and social groups create / build / construct / mold elaborate "alfumbras" (rugs) on the streets of Antigua. (Having never seen this before, I'm not sure which verb is accurate, although all of them apply.) I watch one family work, and learn that they have created an alfumbra for Holy Week, in this exact spot, for each of the past 75 years.

The young man (my teacher at language school) tells me, "It started with my father's father. And now I build with my first son."

These alfumbras are made primarily of sawdust, dyed in varying electric shades echoing vibrant Guatemalan fabrics.
Some include flowers - blossoms, petals and seeds from roses, bird of paradise, ginger, aster, and others unknown to me. One was simply a fifty-foot cornucopia of vegetables. And all of this done for one reason: creating in devotion to the celebration of Christ's death. Go figure.

It is so easy to dismiss it all as mindless compliance or assuaged guilt. But that could be my projection. Not to mention that motivation is a tough thing to judge, especially in the area of faith and devotion.

Truth be told, I'm a sucker for both sentimentality and religious devotion. I marvel at either, regardless of where (an in what amount) I see them. Perhaps because cynicism is the currency of our time, and or because, frankly, I don't completely understand it. Wholehearted devotion, that is. Or maybe it's just that I'm not wired that way. Whenever I have been quizzed about my "devotional life," I've been at a loss as too what to say. Or I search the questioner's eyes for what I hope to be the expected, and therefore, correct answer.

Try as I might through the years, I could never find that source (or is it a valve? Some co-mingling of prayer and willpower?) which produces devotion. As if it were some commodity, measurable, some measuring stick perhaps, an evidence of faithfulness.

But maybe that's the secret. This isn't a contest. Devotion is a by-product. A by-product of a life lived in gratitude. You know, a life lived from acceptance, not for acceptance.

Some things are best consumed in person. Like, say, sunrise in the high California desert. Or late May on Vashon Island, intoxicated with the fragrance of Old Garden Roses in outrageous bloom. Or, sitting with old friends sipping a 30-year-old Port. And pictures do not do justice to Holy Week in Antigua. I don't care how good your digital camera is. So the old adage rings true, "You had to be there." Many of these alfumbras were, truly, exquisite. The artwork varied in skill and design, to be expected. Some were, wonderfully, the soul of kitsch. My favorite, a miniature Sodom and Gomorra (a mocked up small city replete with flames). I'm serious. I was thinking it would go nicely next to some variation of Elvis on velvet. While other alfumbras evoke great piety - some classical art designs, some whimsical, some extraordinarily elaborate, detailed, moving. Even at close range, kneeling, my face no more that one foot away, the alfumbra appears to be an expensive dyed-sisal-rug.

And yet. In less than two hours, these pieces of art will be trampled, destroyed, like elaborate sand castles carried away by the tide.
At five-thirty in the morning on Good Friday, my friends and I walk to Igglesia Merced, where the procession begins. The dawn light renders everything soft and pliable. The sun has not yet risen above the mountains. Even at this hour, thousands (all ages and sizes) move toward the Church. The anticipation is palpable. I smile, this time with the realization that my only context for comparison is the energy from the great crowds moving into the Rose Bowl before the big game - with all the religious zeal only football can engender. (And I have always found perverse satisfaction wondering what team Jesus would cheer for.) There is one similarity. Vendors are doing business everywhere, selling their wares - tapestries, jewelry, trinkets, souvenirs, balloons, Rosaries, pottery, postcards, paintings and my favorite, a divinely-inspired-fresh-squeezed-orange-juice. Like I said, you had to be there. In the air, a mixture of saute'd meat, stir fry vegetables, citrus and incense.

The alfumbras immediately adjacent to the church entrance - those rugs that will be first in the procession path, first to be destroyed as an offering - were completed only one or two hours earlier. People, mostly Guatemalans who have driven from nearby cities and villages to absorb the spectacle, now surround them. Cameras, video cams, capture images that duplicate a scene dating 500 years. It is an odd mixture of antiquity and modernity.

I have come here, thankfully, with no preconceived ideas. I am, however, especially cognizant of the mood, and how it differs from those at any tourist event back in the States. Clearly absent is the assumption that we are here to be entertained.

It occurs to me that these families would have built these magnificent and time consuming pieces of art and adoration had no one been here to see them, save those who will tread over them. So without the immediate gratification of a payoff (there were no alfumbra best-of-show ribbons, or online voting), the event takes on a different and more solemn timbre. My skepticism - my standard emotional fare - takes a back seat for now.

And I am honored to be here. I feel as if I am a guest, and not a member of the gallery.

So, we wander, my friends and I, ahead of the procession, as it is the only way to see and enjoy the alfumbras before they are trampled and cleaned up. From a distance the rugs appear to stretch for city blocks, each melded into the next. By afternoon, all that remains will be traces of dyed sawdust embedded in the cobbled cracks of the street.

You hear the music and smell the incense long before you see the procession. An incense cloud raises form the city street. As a Protestant, it is unfamiliar to my memory glands. But it reminds of me of old cathedrals, and I expect to hear Latin. What I do see is a cluster of young boys walking ahead, swinging their incense pots. The onda (the large hand carried float) is enormous, easily the size of a full-sized Airstream-motor-home (minus the roof and sides), massive enough to require eighty men to carry it. I do not know its weight, but the grimaces on the faces tell me that this isn't a picnic. I was told that each man was required to walk only 15 to 20 minutes, after which another who is waiting spells him. Hundreds of men have participated by the time the onda has made its way through the city streets.

On top of the onda, Jesus bears his cross, borne on his left shoulder. He slumps. The artwork is old fashioned, a caricature, what one would see in a cheap wax museum. The Roman soldiers wear homemade helmets with a top accent made from a blue-bristled-broom. This is made to order for Saturday Night Live, and in another time or place, easy to dismiss. But here, surprisingly, there is, for me, no detraction. The crowd is not silent, but subdued. There is little conversation or commotion as Jesus passes. Many in the crowd cross themselves.

One woman moves forward to kiss the cheek of one of the bearers. "It is my son," she tells me with pride. The procession goes on until dusk, the onda staggering through the city streets, literally swaying and rocking from the side to side. It is the only way to create any forward motion with an object this bulky. From a distance, it appears as if Jesus is woozy, as he staggers, in an exaggeratedly slow pace, his features clouded in an incense haze.

I have an odd memory from my childhood, and I watch knowing that the church of my youth had condemned this entire population to hell for their ritualistic ways, and their failure to believe what we believed.

Such logic was not clear to me even then, but I swallowed it nonetheless, and as a teenager assumed that when it came to religion and faith "my" God was the only game in town. It brings to mind a quote from the book, The Life of PI,

"There are always those who take it upon themselves to defend God, as if Ultimate Reality, as if the sustaining frame of existence, were something weak and helpless. These people walk by a widow deformed by leprosy begging for a few paise, walk by children dressed in rags living in the street, and they think, 'business as usual.' But if they perceive a slight against God, it is a different story. Their faces go red, their chests heave mightily, they sputter angry words. The degree of their indignation is astonishing. Their resolve is frightening. These people fail to realize that it is on the inside that God must be defended, not on the outside. They should direct their anger at themselves. For evil in the open is but evil from within that has been let out. The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart. Meanwhile, the lot of widows and homeless children is very hard, and it is to their defense, not God's that the self-righteous should rush."

I watch the procession now, and feel the heat of shame slowly fill my entire being. And I wonder about the toxic role of prejudice, bigotry and myopia in religious faith.

And think of how our world is becoming more increasingly divided between 'us' and 'them.' And how we learn to mistrust, and hate, only because someone is 'different.'"

Dorothy Day reminds us that we cannot love God unless we can love one another.

And we can't love one another, unless we can get to know one another.

In that light, theology - most certainly - takes a back seat.

It is necessary for us to shift from orthodoxy (right thinking) to orthopraxy (right practice). With our emphasis on the primacy of "right beliefs," we put the cart before the horse. Truth is, I aced all the tests - I knew the "correct answers" on all matters of theology, Christology, epistemology, soteriology - when I was young, and still didn't have a clue about life. The issue is clear-cut: If we have all these things and have not love. . .

Maybe it is time that we allow God to escape from the confines of our theology.

I do know that Jesus was misunderstood, even hated, precisely because he welcomed all. Because he consorted with, dined with, loved life with, the disenfranchised, the outcasts and the 'non-members' of the club; lepers, prostitutes, tax collectors, women and children. . .even Methodists from what I can tell.

So. If we want a theology, we can begin there. In my own faith journey, it's not so much the how of his death that piques my curiosity, or drives my devotion, and I found Mel Gibson's flesh flailing a bit melodramatic for my taste. It's not how he died, but how he lived that draws, magnetizes, prompts, inspires, engages and moves me.

There's a great story about an American visiting a great British Estate. It was very old, with expansive and well-manicured lawns. He found the head groundskeeper, looking for the secret. "How can I have a lawn like that back home," he asked.  "It's simple really," the groundskeeper replied after thinking about the question for some time. "You mow it faithfully. And roll it, weekly. And then you roll it once a week, for 300 years."

So how do I find a new sense of passion in my faith? Maybe I begin by building an alfumbra. Once a year for 75 years. The procession is ahead of me now, maybe two city blocks. Jesus staggers on, seeming to rise above the incense.

I would pray, if I knew what to say, but silence is better. It is enough to practice the Sacrament of the Blessed Present.

I say nothing, and absorb the moment - Holy Week in Antigua - this rare and sensual feast.

After you had
taken your leave,
I found God's footprints
on my floor.
-Tagore