GRCC Simple Gifts

We had a beautiful service for crime victims’ families last Thursday.  Many tears were shed.  Families asked for us to do another.  Hands-on caregivers were generous in their appreciation.  Support people heard stories that became a gift both to the family member suffering and to the support person.

One profound experience was a story without words.  My friend David, a Vietnam vet, went to be supportive.  During the service the heartbroken woman next to him held on to his hand.  Both were crying.  She never did tell him her story.  After worship, Marie Gibson had obtained long-stemmed carnations to give to the family members.  When she received her flower, she passed it back to David.  David took it to his church the next day and left it on the altar in honor and prayer for all of those who are suffering from violence in our city.

Here is our work: to greatly expand the company of people engaged; to show people isolated by violence that they are not alone; quietly and persistently to add another set of experiences, feelings and images to the lives that have been so dominated with horrific images; to issue a Covenant for the Beloved Community, ten community standards that we believe get closer to the root of violence in our community.

We learned that grief knows no division of faith, no race, no class, no geography.  It is the common bond that will unite us to become the beloved community which, alone, will end the violence.  

Richard Newell Myers

Dear Friends -  We have prepared a page of devotional resources for Holy Week for your use in prayer and worship above.  Please note, there is an Easter Dawn service at Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School at 6:30 on March 23.  If you have other services you’d like to tell us about, please make a comment below.    Richard Newell Myers 

New York’s new governor as of Monday will be David Paterson of Harlem.  David is experienced as long-time state senator, funny, black, and legally blind.  American justice seems to have a problem.  Someone’s finger is on the scale when you consider all of the poor people who are in jail and how many powerful people whose actions hurt millions are well respected.  How is it that there was no law and oversight to protect borrowers from the fine print, from the pie-in-the-sky promises of no money down and ever-increasing home values?  Why is it that CEO’s of mortgage companies can placidly drift to earth beneath golden parachutes with only a few blasts of wind to disturb them?  Maybe we’ll be lucky that a blind governor can once again put the blindfold over the eyes and take the finger off the scale of justice.                           Richard Newell Myers 

Tim Donaher, the new Monroe County Public Defender, met the people last night at the Motherhouse of the Sisters of St. Joseph here in Rochester.  The event was sponsored by the Greater Rochester Community of Churches.  He answered questions for more than ninety minutes, many of them regarding the process by which the county legislature chose him.  He insisted that he could not make any comments on the process, as his job would not be possible if he sided with one side of the debate.  Two of his long-time deputies in the office came on their own to support him.   Tim is a Republican and they are Democrats.  They all fielded questions from an audience of about fifty.   The audience expressed considerable frustration at being shut out of the selection process which was in house by the Republican majority.  This is a departure from the merit based, transparent policy that chose Donaher’s predecessor, Ed Nowak.  Myra Brown of Anti Racism Movement said that, as a woman of color, she once again was shut out and then being asked by white people to put it behind her and help them make it work.  This racism was unacceptable.  I challenged Mr. Donaher’s assertion that he was not going to make a political statement by saying that when he decided to let his name go forward in the process, he did make a political statement.  I said that he could have chosen to opt out.His deputy said to me, “Then, who do you think the majority party would have chosen?”  The two deputy public defenders said that they were unhappy with the process, but knew of Donaher’s  competence and chose to encourage him to go ahead, because they believed the process would not change and a poorer PD would have been chosen.  The department itself was at risk, they said.  Their poor clients would be the victim.  It’s up to us to make sure this does not happen again.     Richard Newell Myers   

Here in exile my heart is breaking,

    and so I turn my thoughts to God.

God has sent waves of sorrow over my soul;

   chaos roars at me like a flood,

   like waterfalls thundering down to the Jordan

   from Mt. Hermon and Mount Mizar. . . .

Why am I so sad?  Why am I so troubled?

I will put my hope in God, and once again I will praise my beloved,

my savior and my God.  (TEV) Psalm 42: 6,7,11

Psalm 42 was the reading for the Taize community on February 22.  The psalmist wonders why she or he is so sad, so troubled?  The words are life-giving to all who are sad.  

In the city of Rochester last week, two fifteen year olds were shot in the back on the same street on the same night.  It is rumored that they were going to be witnesses in another murder case.  Drugs were involved.  Our hearts are breaking.

Still vivid in our experience, also, is the way we were excluded from the visitors’ gallery of the county legislature on February 12.  The legislature, in a partisan process, was set to appoint a public defender.  Frustration had built among us who were not consulted at all in the process.  Many of us had come both to speak and to show our opposition.

We arrived in a driving snow storm.  Beth and I were turned away from the back door by armed sheriff’s deputies when we tried to get out of the snow.  They sent us another block to the front.  We ended up with more than a hundred people corralled like cattle in the lobby facing four other armed deputies standing on the two staircases and the elevators denied to us.  We could not get up to the fourth floor chamber.  Never in our memory has the public been treated like this.  

The majority republicans had changed the posted room limit from 180 to 75, but people who did manage early to get upstairs said, and I saw after waiting for nearly an hour, that there were not even 75 allowed in the public space.  Standing between us and the legislators was a row of big men with badges and guns.  Speakers all were ushered to and from the lectern by these armed men.  

The republicans were afraid of the public.  At least one legislator, arriving on time for the meeting, was barred from getting there for a time.  The officers did not believe him when he told them he was an elected representative.

The clerk kept calling names of people who had signed up to speak.  “She’s downstairs,” they would hear.  The next name was called.  “He’s in the lobby.”  Over and over the names were called until someone who by random selection happened to have been standing by the elevator was brought up, searched and scanned, was there to speak.  

When it came my turn to speak, maybe the third time my name was called, I told the legislators that their grandchildren would be their judges.  The newspapers would bear witness either for or against them.  They would some day have to answer to their grandchildren.  I hoped that their grandchildren would be proud of them.  I can’t for the life of me see how anyone would be proud at what they did.  

Psalm 42 suggests that God is the one who sends the waves of sorrow over our soul.  Perhaps God does give us sorrow.  It is the one thing with power to draw a broken community together.  Today’s paper told of children in the city school district who cry on Friday as they are about to leave school, because they know they will be hungry all weekend.  No wonder we are so sad.

The chaos of violence and political arrogance roar at us like a flood, the thundering waterfalls of poverty and racism.  But, we will put our hope in God and work to build what is broken, to raise up the foundations.  The exiled psalmist longs to go home again.  Murder on the streets is not our home.  Hungry children are not our home.  Political strong-arms against the public are not our home.  But, there were a lot of saints in the corral with us.    

Richard Newell Myers

p.s. Please see we’ve added a link to gratefulness.org - recommended by a saint.   

Writer John Grisham appeared on Bill Moyers’ Journal last Friday to talk about his new book, The Appeal, but more about his life and his faith.  It seems he was invited by former President Jimmy Carter to the New Baptist Covenant meeting in Atlanta this week to give a keynote address to 10,000 Baptists of many denominations gathered to celebrate their unity after a long season of division.  This gathering and Grisham’s testimony are another evidence that the country is tired of being pitted against one another.  Most of the candidates for president sound the theme.  In Rochester, we who are giving birth to a new covenant to end the violence in our region have also arrived at that point. We know we will not achieve peace in our community until we cross the imaginary lines of race and geography and economy and class.  Martin Luther King’s Beloved Community is gaining on us. There is a new spirit in the air.  How wonderfully surprising for this Baptist to hear of the faith of another Baptist, John Grisham.  My own pastor Rachel McGuire in her benediction last Sunday said, “May Jesus sneak up on you this week. . .”   And every week.                                                                                            Richard Newell Myers  

Mr. Arun Gandhi, fifth grandson of Mohandas Gandhi, has resigned from the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence here in Rochester.   Below, you can read the letter from us to the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle.  On the University of Rochester site here, you can see Mr. Gandhi’s resignation statement, the statement from the Institute, and from the President of the University of Rochester, Dr. Joel Seligman.  There is also a link to Mr. Gandhi’s writing for the website On Faith which prompted the outcry that led to his resignation.  We are interested in your take on these things, and suggestions for where we go from here.  We covet your prayers.   Richard Newell Myers 

Here is an op ed piece in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle for January 23 that addresses the controversy arising from a post by our local leader for the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence, Mr. Arun  Gandhi.  You can read the entire post on the Washington Post/Newsweek site On Faith.   We were upset with the generalized use of “the Jews” by Mr. Gandhi, his neglect of the culture of violence as the United States contributes to it, and his complete insensitivity to the indelible wounds of the holocaust experience.  We pray, however, that the community will be reconciled and at the same time learn to speak honestly about our reliance on military force in defense of Israel. 

(January 23, 2008)

In the case of our friend Arun Gandhi’s now-famous blog on the “On Faith” section of the Washington Post’s Web site, it is not just Jewish people who were wounded by his words. As non-Jewish members of Rochester’s faith community, we also felt bewilderment, hurt and anger.  We did not, nor could we, feel the depth of pain that our friends in the Jewish community spoke about.  And not feeling deeply shows our spiritual lack.

But the danger for Rochester now is that we will begin and end in our dealings with Gandhi by encouraging his sanction by the board of the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence, which he co-founded.  If that is the end of it and we do not likewise engage him as a brother, then we, like Arun Gandhi himself, will have contributed to the cycle of violence.  

Gandhi’s grandfather and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. pointed to another way. Their strategy was to amass truth force, “satyagraha” as Gandhi called it, in such a way as to change conditions of injustice without adding to violence. The goal of Mohandas Gandhi and King was not to defeat and certainly not to punish their adversaries, but to win them over and to honor them. Our adversaries are not the people. The true adversaries, as King said, are “the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism.”

Arun Gandhi’s words contributed to the giant of racism, and the whole community was wounded by them. But he wrote because he was offended by the giant of militarism. Arun Gandhi was insensitive to the human pain his words evoked. American society shows little awareness of the suffering our militaristic policies have produced in the Middle East. Moral maturity calls us to engage all three of these giants.

The question for us is how we can use the 21st-century version of truth force to be reconciled with Gandhi and to expand the whole community’s moral understanding. We encourage, and will do all we can to facilitate our community’s coming together for healing no matter how the board of the M.K. Gandhi Institute decides to handle Gandhi’s role in the institute. It is far better to broaden our understanding of one another than to settle for an administrative censure. Then, each of us will be more powerful witnesses of both the values and the approach of Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.

Richard Newell Myers  &  M. Gratia L’Esperance, RSM  

Let us return to the great life of Martin Luther King, Jr.  I saw him once, as a young seminarian in Boston.  He appeared at the Boston Garden most likely in the early months of 1967.  My life-partner Elizabeth and I could afford only cheap tickets to this fundraiser for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. 

They were working on a shoe string budget at the Boston Garden to divert as much money as possible to the cause. Sidney Portier and Harry Belafonte opened the evening. When it came time for Dr. King, the two celebrities had to move the grand piano out of the center of the stage themselves. One of them quipped to the audience, “Black power.”A pulpit was brought to center stage front.  We hoped it was bullet proof.  Dr. King came from stage left surrounded by men placing their bodies in the way of a potential assassin. Dr. King stood at the pulpit, and the bodyguards left him alone to speak to us.

I do not remember what he said.  I remember, instead, his courage.  His home had been bombed.  He had been stabbed at a book signing in Harlem by a mentally ill woman.  The knife point was next to the aorta.  He and his family had received numerous death threats.  But, he kept on.  He once said,  Our lives begin to end the day we become SILENT about things that matter. 

He did not let threats or exhaustion silence him.  He kept on speaking of things that matter.  On this Martin Luther King weekend, what deep longing within you seeks expression from your lips?   What keys on your computer cry out for you to strike them? Who needs an encouraging word?  What injustice must be addressed?   What good news must be broadcast?  

Scripture says, “How beautiful upon the mountain are the feet of them that bring good tidings, that publish peace.”   How beautiful he was!

Let’s publish peace.  

Richard Newell Myers