Praying... for Santa

The mystical night approaches quickly now, full of mystery and magic. And so it is that a boy, a young Palestinian Christian, prays to God for Santa to be able to cross the border checkpoints and come to visit even them.

This prayer was read a decade ago at World Vision’s annual Day of Prayer, one of several Children's Prayers that day. I saved it at the time and have never forgotten about it.  In fact, I prayed it just the other day for the children of Syria, that nation now torn asunder with its children strewn beyond its borders. As silly as I might have sounded to the others in the prayer circle, it just felt right.

There's something very special about children's prayers--their immediacy, practically, innocence...faith. 

I invite you to read this short prayer slowly, perhaps at the pace it would have been written, as it would have been felt. I could imagine it being prayed by candlelight, after darkness falls on Christmas Eve, this Night of Nights.  May we pray it in our hearts this Christmas for all God's children…

Prayer written by Bisan Mousa, aged 7 from Talitha Kumi Lutheran School in the West Bank

   O Lord Jesus, protect us from danger, and distance the bombs away from our homes, because they have been destroyed and we are forced to leave our homes for the street.

   O Jesus, distance the evil from us and the missiles and the rockets so that we can go back to living peacefully and so that Santa Claus can come to us. Our teacher told us that at the military checkpoint, the soldier did not allow Santa Claus to enter Bethlehem. We want Christmas to come and want to decorate the tree like the rest of the children in the world.

   O Jesus, give us courage and strength to overcome fear and to live in peace and tranquility and freedom in our beloved land and precious Palestine.
Amen.  

Peace and tranquility and freedom on earth; goodwill toward all.

Cory

Christmas Eve 2013

The Child of Christmas (from 2010)

We took Christmas Eve dinner to Janet's stepmother's home this evening.  Alice lives alone with a caregiver, and at age 93, dementia is coming on quickly.  After dinner, she opened her gift basket, and the highlight was a small set of photos Janet had assembled in an accordion-folded photobook.  She created it as a memory book of different stages of the life of our family, especially where Alice and Janet's now-deceased father where part of the scene.

Alice had lots of trouble determining who the people were in the pictures, but she was mesmerized with it.  When Janet then showed her there were just as many photos on the back side of the accordion folds, she was fascinated.  I remember as a small child going with my mom to the grocery; other days we went to the meat market.  One day, I discovered a short hallway in the grocery, and a few steps later found myself in the meat market!  My delight at such an amazing discovery was much like Alice's delight tonight.  As she finished the back panels, she started back the other way as though she'd never seen these photos.  Back and forth she went, perhaps 4-5 times.  And each time she did, the people in the pictures were slightly more familiar and she was even more touched.  She kept asking if she could have a copy of some of the photos, and each time that we assured her the entire memorybook was hers to keep, she would be overwhelmed with gratitude.  At Christmas Eve when our son Ben was two years old, 35 years ago now, he received a jack-in-the-box.  As we twirled the grinder, he began to dance to "Pop Goes the Weasel".  And when the jack actually popped up, he was so stunned that he gasped and fell backwards, straight as a board, to the floor.   It was so hilarious, we played it again.  And Ben was just as stunned and fell backwards all over again.  Finally, after about four times, he'd figured out what would happen, and he dropped backwards, but only to please us.  The gig was up.

But not so with Alice this evening.  In fact, each time we assured her again, and each time she saw the photos of her late beloved husband, the more moved she was, not less.  Tears then came freely for her, and I comforted her that it's good to remember on Christmas, even the memories that touch us in tender places.  Alice, who had been quite agitated earlier in the evening, certain that she'd bought and wrapped untold gifts for us which were nowhere to be found (because they didn't exist), ended the evening in childlike wonder and contentment, memorybook and chocolates still clutched in her hands.  She will have many days of re-discovering her memorybook and its photos, even as she tries to recapture some of her quickly fading memory.

Please don't misunderstand my attitude: each time I see her struggle with her memory, I'm reminded that I'm not far behind her at all.

As we drove away, Janet broke down in tears.  Seeing the photos of her father and her only sibling, both now deceased, and remembering once again the passing of her mother just one year ago, opened her eyes.  "The past few weeks preparing Christmas gifts, I kept feeling I was forgetting something or someone.  Now I realize it was my family members who are no longer around to give gifts to."

And I had a bit of a revelation that sadness at Christmas is not necessarily morbid, that it can be honoring, and cleansing.  As we got home I told Janet that I thought her dad would be very proud and grateful for her thoughtful gift to her stepmom.

Earlier that afternoon, Janet and I had sung Christmas carols with residents of a retirement home in our little town.  This was the second year we've done this, and though the crowd is only a few handfuls, we know these are the people who don't have family and friends calling, and we're blessed to be there.  Between the carols, I sang a few songs at the piano, including a lovely one made famous by Amy Grant, "Grown-Up Christmas List".  The chords and notes are a bit tricky, so I'm usually paying attention to that.  But mid-song, I was struck in some new way by the sentiment of the chorus and thought to myself in a flash, "This could be my theme song!"

No more lives torn apart
That wars would never start
And time would heal all hearts
Everyone would have a friend
And right would always win
And love would never end
This is my grown-up Christmas list

I really like the song, but honestly I always thought it a bit sappy.  But this Advent season, I've been noticing more and reading more about the Peaceable Kingdom of God.  Passages from Isaiah about lions laying down with lambs, and children playing at adders' dens, as lovely as they are, are also very fanciful, frankly.  Lions as we know them need meat, and mother snakes are as protective as are any other mothers around their young.

What happened to Isaiah?  Was he simply senile, in his so-called "second childhood", like Alice (as delightful as that can be at times)?

Maybe another possible answer can be found in the bridge of the same song:

What is this illusion called the innocence of youth
Maybe only in our blind belief can we ever find the truth

When I read Isaiah's prophetic passages, it's clear that you and I can never usher in the fullness of the Kingdom of God.  We can -- and if we call ourselves followers of Jesus, we must -- work toward a more just and peaceable world, as he did.  But we can't turn lions into vegetarians or make snakes trust infants with their offspring.

But we can embrace a childlike faith that God can bring about something of which we can only dream as in childlike fantasy, that somehow, somewhere in time, God will do the part that only God can do.  And just maybe God also helps us to do our part in the meantime.

Keeping the child alive in ourselves probably shouldn't be confined to the beginning and ending days of our lives, especially in this special season as we keep the Child of Christmas in our hearts.

Cory
Christmas Eve, 2010

Still Waiting for God

I have no idea what else she said.  It was one of those prayers where one sentence stops you cold. You wish you could just hit the brakes on the prayer and contemplate for a bit; but instead the pray-er keeping truckin’ down the road and you find yourself left at the curb, gazing into the pearl you discovered.

She said it in the middle of a lovely prayer in a lovely home in Orange County, as 20-25 of us joined hands around the bounty in our midst.  "...And we thank you Lord for once again providing us a beautiful meal," prayed the woman of great faith from Congo (DRC, formerly Zaire), "even as we are mindful of those around the world who are still waiting for you to show up in their lives today."

That juxtaposition took my spiritual breath away.

There we were, encircling the trappings of our invulnerability, but those “still waiting for God to show up for them”, on the edge, without a net—they are really the ones with faith.  Faith is what you must have when you don't already possess what you need.  Let’s admit it: for us, faith is usually optional, something that kicks in when a loved one is sick or some situation is beyond our power.  For the poor, exercising faith is as daily a regimen as my morning stretches.

Will God show up in their lives today? And if another day goes by where they feel forgotten by God, will they still have faith enough to ask again tomorrow?

Rich Stearns in He Walks Among Us, his new devotional book with wife Reneé , tells the story of driving away from an earthquake-ravaged village in India when a desperate mother ran up to the window of his car, holding her young son—who had no feet. In the chaos, Rich’s driver kept going, but Rich couldn't get the boy out of his mind, despite the thousands of other faces and needs he'd seen there in Gujarat. He felt personally compelled to find out more, and some weeks later the staff found this boy whose legs had been crushed in the quake.  Rich gladly wrote a personal check for the boy to get the prosthetics his mother couldn't begin to afford ...a whopping $300.  Three hundred dollars to change his life for years, allowing him to go to school, help his mother at home and begin to make his new way in the world as a double amputee.

The boy's mother in all likelihood had watched Rich's car drive away, the son in her arms feeling heavier by the minute as the adrenalin of hope drained away, and felt once again that God had not shown up for her.

"Hope deferred makes the heart sick" even Solomon the king admitted (Prov. 13:12).  And not simply deferred; this mother must have felt that hope had just left her behind, wheels kicking up a cloud of spurning dust in its wake.  Hers was a desperate hope, of course: the only way out that she imagined was for Rich to whisk her boy away from her; a stranger, but one who may have seemed like royalty from her vantage point.

It's a story with a lovely ending. And it was a reminder to Rich that desperation and poverty have a face, and a name (Vikas), and that we each can make a difference in individual lives.

But it's also a reminder that even behind the sometimes sterile statistics of victims harmed and beneficiaries helped—whether in India, Haiti, New Orleans or now the Philippines, there are not only real faces and real stories, but real people clinging to hope, with faith enough to keep waiting for God to show up in their lives today...like the women in this short video report from a Philippines relief operation last week..http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rCGFMwsZziQ&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DrCGFMwsZziQ

I said earlier that, for those of us with means and safety nets, faith is mostly optional, reserved for family and friends in crisis and times when we feel powerlessness.  But that depends on what we think about and pray for, doesn’t it?  If our prayers and our vision are large enough, they are always beyond us; we are always powerless.  When we seek to see the wide world as God can see it, we become aware that only God can heal it.

And if our hearts and prayers are willing, God will even recruit us in doing just that.

I’m thankful to know people like you: willing to be part of the answer to the prayers of those still waiting for God to show up today.

Happy Thanksgiving,

Cory
PS: This year as we gather around our own bounty, I for one plan to repeat the words of her prayer.

Saving We Few Who Are Rich

Yesterday, on the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy's assassination, I re-read JFK's inaugural address, considered one of America's finest by some historians.

Buried amid the oft-quoted sections, one line jumped out at me which I hadn't noticed before, at the conclusion of this paragraph: 

"To those people in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required--not because the communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right. If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich."

No doubt his line about saving the few who are rich was an ominous warning against the pent-up disaffection of the huddled masses of humanity for whom suffering is a daily reality.

But what struck me is a slightly different, but equally real, truth which permeates my life's work: that we, the global minority who are rich, can only find redemption in helping the many who are in poverty.

It's true that we can also save the lives of many in need, improve their opportunities, level their playing field, and create an enabling environment where they can gradually make a better life for themselves and their offspring and communities.  

And, in the bargain, we too are saved: power-washed of the toxic influences of wealth, the hoarding and frivolous spending of money, and an intentional blindness to the inequities of the world as the ones who benefit from those inequities. A “least of these” mindset can mercifully redeem us of the radioactivity of wealth accumulating like so much plaque on our souls.

This week, I had coffee with a supporter I hadn't met previously.  Despite the pressures of his job as leader of thousands of subordinates scattered around the country and carrying a high corporate position, he has delved deeply into some emotionally and mentally disturbing issues that otherwise don’t come close to touching his personal world, such as the use of gender-based violence as a strategy of war. 

It was a great encouragement to talk to this soft-spoken C-suite executive. He told me, "A decade ago you wouldn't have found me open to these issues at all. I was focused on my kids' sports and the stuff of life."  But eventually he began to realize his responsibilities to the wider world as a person "to whom much has been given."  God stirred his heart through an African safari that also exposed him to people who must live not unlike the animals he came to see. A Generous Giving conference and a chance encounter with Rich Stearn's The Hole in Our Gospel provided some directions for the stirring already in his heart and mind.

We talked at length about issues of grinding poverty and injustice, about his recent and upcoming trips to see needs and to work on solutions. And as we parted I thanked him for our time together, how it had encouraged me to hear how his life had transformed as he had opened his mind, heart, wallet and calendar to these needs.  He seemed to laugh a bit at himself as he replied, "Now, the reason I go to work every day... is for this stuff."

"If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich."

I think my new friend is one of those being saved.

Cory

November, 2013

PS: The text and recording of JFK's inaugural can be found here: http://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/BqXIEM9F4024ntFl7SVAjA.aspx?gclid=CNH6toLR-7oCFUlyQgodKnYA7Q

Philippines Typhoon latest

My heart is heavy this morning for the people of the central Philippines. Initial reports seemed that Typhoon Haiyan had moved over the islands with such speed as to avoid the major destruction of flooding and mudslides. But subsequent reports of a deadly storm surge of seawater (think Katrina, Sandy, the Asian tsunami) up to 13 feet deep, along with winds clocked up to 190 mph, have decimated lowlands. Today's NY Times story and slideshow paint a grim picture of total destruction in some areas, with many others unaccounted for... http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/12/world/asia/vast-challenges-for-philippines-after-typhoon.html?_r=0

In anticipation of the typhoon, last week WV had pre-positioned relief supplies  but I have not seen reports yet on whether those are already being deployed.  As you'll see in the NY Times video clip above, WV's global supply site in Frankfurt has air-shipped blankets, tarps, and medical supplies.  (I've also run across in-country WV interviews on BBC and NPR.) WV has many ongoing programs and sponsored children in the effected areas, and staff who live alongside the people they serve there. The most recent internal SitReps from World Vision include this:
Twenty World Vision ADPs [area development programs] across nine provinces are affected by this latest disaster, including in Bohol, which was hit by an earthquake last month. In World Vision ADPs, close to 40,000 sponsored children and their families are potentially affected. 
There are reports that 10,000 people have died in one area alone (Tacloban) as a result of the massive storm. The number of recorded fatalities is likely to rise as communications channels are restored and access improves to impacted areas. Around 4 million people are believed to be affected by the disaster country-wide. Lack of communication and power outages, plus destruction of major roads and infrastructure is rendering information flow extremely difficult. 
The key needs will be water and sanitation, food, shelter, child protection and education, health and nutrition and psychosocial support. Staff care is also a priority – many staff have been personally affected by this latest disaster and relief workers have been managing back-to-back disaster responses this year. 
World Vision is planning to target 400,000 people with relief operations.  To meet the significant humanitarian needs of children and communities affected by Typhoon Haiyan, World Vision is appealing for US$20 million for its response. 

Please join me in prayer for the people in these devastated communities, our staff, sponsored children, and for effective and speedy relief operations.

Kindly,
Cory
PS: Janet and I felt moved to donate for relief the day the typhoon hit and may send more.   If you feel led to do so, the fastest way is through our website Typhoon Haiyan Response page http://www.worldvision.org/news-stories-videos/typhoon-haiyan-philippines , or contact me for details.

"Who Are the Poor?"

This summer, we visited our son, who is living in lower Manhattan, the West Village (Greenwich) to be exact.  We had a lovely time with him, walking from Soho to Central Park, and on Sunday morning I decided to walk the couple blocks to the Episcopal Church we'd seen the night before.  I arrived late, just as the female priest was concluding her written sermon in a rather uninspiring voice.  It was styled after one of those New England churches with the private pew boxes. So as I sidled into a nearby pew quietly, I found myself "boxed" with a young man and his motorcycle helmet.  

Considering the geography, and that the pastor had just shifted into weekly announcements and was now enthusiastically inviting everyone to their annual LGBT square dance the following Saturday, it was easy for me to interpret the guy next to me as someone right out of the band "Village People" (you'll hear their famous "YMCA" at every wedding reception).  I was fine with that, but it was definitely a different demographic than at my home church.  My curiosity wanted to take it all in, but as I did I found some judgmental feelings in the mix.

Communion was the game-changer I'll remember for a long time.  Up to the altar they all came: young and old, gay and straight, biker, butcher, baker, candlestick maker. On one side of me stood a tough woman in flabby jeans, the pudgy motorcycle guy on the other, next to a very effeminate man, next to an old woman leaning on her cane, smiling. Looking around me as we stood between the pillars of the altar with open palms for the communion host, forming our own flash-mob community as fellow beggars for this precious moment, rapid fire phrases from Simon and Garfunkel's song "Blessed" came to me...

Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit.

Blessed is the lamb whose blood flows.

Blessed are the sat upon, Spat upon, Ratted on,

O Lord, Why have you forsaken me?

...Blessed are the meth drinkers, Pot sellers, Illusion dwellers...

...Blessed are the penny rookers, Cheap hookers, Groovy lookers...

(I've pasted the full lyric at bottom…it’s worth reading.)

It was a lovely moment. I starting smiling, too. I came back and knelt down, listening to the magnificent choir singing from a Monteverdi mass, and said to myself, "I like this Jesus!"

I thought today of this whole scene and re-read my journal entry about it because of today's devotional from Henri Nouwen, entitled "Who Are the Poor?".  He has been challenging readers that the poor need to be the center of the church, so that our focus is outward, not inward -- which inevitably leads to disunity and contention. But today he expands the definition of the poor to include... all of us, including those who recognize our poverty and those who don't…

   The poor are the center of the Church.  But who are the poor?  At first we might think of people who are not like us:  people who live in slums, people who go to soup kitchens, people who sleep on the streets, people in prisons, mental hospitals, and nursing homes.  But the poor can be very close.  They can be in our own families, churches or workplaces.  Even closer, the poor can be ourselves, who feel unloved, rejected, ignored, or abused.

   It is precisely when we see and experience poverty - whether far away, close by, or in our own hearts - that we need to become the Church; that is, hold hands as brothers and sisters, confess our own brokenness and need, forgive one another, heal one another's wounds, and gather around the table of Jesus for the breaking of the bread.   Thus, as the poor we recognise Jesus, who became  poor for us.

   

Gathering around “the table of Jesus for the breaking of the bread” in our shared brokenness. Thus, AS the poor we recognize Jesus, who became poor.

At first we think of the poor as those who are "not like us," like the odd conglomeration at that Greenwich Village-people church.  But miraculously and mercifully, in that moment, I was suddenly allowed to become part of that same motley crew.  And I felt blessed to be in their company, all of us under the cross we encircled, arms outstretched, hands open to receive. As one.

Blessed are the judgmental too; thanks be to God.

Cory

November 2013

Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit.

Blessed is the lamb whose blood flows.

Blessed are the sat upon, Spat upon, Ratted on,

O Lord, Why have you forsaken me?

I got no place to go,

I've walked around Soho for the last night or so.

Ah, but it doesn't matter, no.

Blessed is the land and the kingdom.

Blessed is the man whose soul belongs to.

Blessed are the meth drinkers, Pot sellers, Illusion dwellers.

O Lord, Why have you forsaken me?

My words trickle down, like a wound

That I have no intention to heal.

Blessed are the stained glass, window pane glass.

Blessed is the church service makes me nervous

Blessed are the penny rookers, Cheap hookers, Groovy lookers.

O Lord, Why have you forsaken me?

I have tended my own garden

Much too long.

-        Lyrics by Paul Simon

The Village People Photos.... http://officialvillagepeople.com/photos/official-approved-group-photos/

Thanks to Women, We All Belong

My sister-in-law Maria told me an amazing story once when we were visiting.  She was explaining to her three-year old daughter Frida that she shouldn't touch birds that have fallen out of the nest, because their mothers recognize them by smell, and a human touch would mask that unique scent.

I don't know if that's ornithologically accurate, but that night, Frida was laying in bed with Maria next to her, when she suddenly whispered, "Mama, smell me.  Am I your baby?"  Maria immediately remembered the earlier conversation, so she sniffed Frida very theatrically, and announced with a big hug that yes, Frida was her own special girl.  Apparently, Frida and her mother had been repeating that ritual every night since.  Each night, Frida would ask again, then Maria would sniff her and announce with great affection and fanfare that yes, Frida was her baby.

There is something in us that desires connection and a sense that we belong, that we have identity.  My brother's daughters, while raised in a very gender-neutral environment, nonetheless want to understand who they are as little girls.  At preschool, they gravitate to the little girl groups and do things the little girls do.  They want to know who they are, where they belong.

Who are we, mommy? Am I your own little girl?  Is this where I belong?

I remember once back during our years living in Chicago when Janet gave some cheese to the two daughters of some friends of ours. The younger one immediately looked to the older one and said, "Laura, do we like this?"

Is this who we are?

We all feel the yearning to belong, to something, to someone. To feel cared for and cared about.

One of the most tragic side-products of the AIDS pandemic that swept the globe, especially in its poorer places, during the first decade of this century, was the millions of children who lost one or both parents to the disease.  Most adults died between ages 20 to 45, the prime child-rearing years. Orphans who could move in with an Auntie or were shipped off to an elderly grandmother were the most fortunate.  Next were those who could be taken in by a neighbor.  Those on the other end of the spectrum ended up on the streets or, in rural areas, in what we in the poverty business rather clinically refer to as "child-headed households."  But a dilapidated one-room mud-and-stick hut occupied solely by children trying to fend for themselves, the oldest sibling maybe age 13 or 14, is anything but a "clinical" event.

The experiences of visiting these child-headed households were for me mind-numbing and almost paralyzing in light of their tremendous needs.  They were also times where I most admired the nurturing response of women.

I met John and his two siblings in Malawi, living in a "home" which was almost indescribable. Inside it was probably no more than six feet by eight feet, with an interior dividing wall stretching most of its length, giving the effect of it having two "rooms" with an open door between.  The three boys slept on the bare dirt ground, with a blanket and a single peg for each boys’ clothing being the only other articles I can recall inside.

It was my first trip to an AIDS-ravaged region in those early days, and I did what I often do when I don't know what to say: I played the organizer of my group instead of engaging the people in pain, and instead I made sure my group was involved in the experience of meeting these boys.  But one woman traveling with us, Kay, didn't need to be a host and wasn't about to act like one.  She was no doubt overwhelmed as well, but unlike me, she funneled those feelings of disorientation and shock into compassion.  She sat on the ground with the boys, she spoke tenderly to them, and with her words and countenance she showed them a mother's compassion.  John, the oldest and therefore the one who always needed to be strong, furtively wiped away a reluctant tear sneaking out of the corner of his eye. That stingy tear said more than a torrent could have, about how the compassion of a woman and mother had, at least for the moment, broken through and soothed his weary and fearful soul.

A few years later, I traveled in Tanzania visiting orphaned children with a woman from a very different background. Evelyn is a member of her Community Care Coalition, which is a volunteer network that was caring for orphans and vulnerable children in their own area.  Evelyn and I, with a staff translator, rode in the back of a vehicle on our way to visit Rosy and her two sisters, who comprised another child-headed household.  Theirs was again a miserable story, but the Care Coalition was ensuring the girls are checked on regularly and can receive help that comes available from outside or from the community's own meager possessions. Some coalitions develop a community garden where all the food that is grown goes to the orphans and vulnerable children. Other groups, such as Evelyn's, get trained and become officially registered nonprofits which can receive grants such as chicken coops and other assistance to distribute to those in need, those like Rosy and her sisters.

But though the sisters were surviving--living by themselves for over three years when I met them--I sensed a deep loneliness.  "We love it when Evelyn comes.  She's the only person who comes to visit."  It was such a forlorn comment that I used a photo of Evelyn with these three girls as my screen saver, reminding me why I do my work on behalf of children.

But even more powerful to me than the lonely misery of these children was my conversation with Evelyn.  On the way there, I asked her why she gave the many hours she does to being a community volunteer. Her feelings needed no translation.  "No child should live like this," she replied with the indignation of just about every mother everywhere.  Her own children have their mother, but here are other children who have neither mother or father. Therefore, Evelyn sees that it is partly her responsibility before God to care for them, too.  The rest is unimportant: No child should live like this, not if Evelyn can do something about it, anyway.  The response is immediate and caring.

There is a great mantle women carry as nurturers and caregivers.  Kay, from suburban Orange County, California, and Evelyn from rural Tanzania, both feel it.  Both push past revulsion or shock better than most of us men, and they extend arms of love that reach across chasms of culture and spasms of pain to say, "Yes, you still belong. You are one of us. You still deserve motherly love and a compassionate touch.  As long as we share this planet, you are important to me."

Cory
August 2013