Coming back with a poem called Secret.

 

Secret

Debbie Blane

7/7/2024

 

Nowadays most people probably think of

Rome

 

As the home of the Church…..

(and yes, this is going to be one of my fam ám ous mini (I’m thinking of Mini Pearl here) sermons)

But it is not.  The home of the church that is.  (This is definitely a mini sermon.)

 

No, no, no, no.

 

The home of the church is in Jerusalem.

It is called the Church of the Sepulcher.

 

Let us start at the very beginning though….

To do that of course we would have to go back to creation

And that would take all day and all night,

So I will tolerate

A short cut.

We will begin in Bethlehem.

In Palestine.

I do marvel sometimes that the Church of the Nativity

Which is erected over the manger where the baby Jesus was

                                           Born,

Has survived 2,000 plus years.  It is not quite that old,

But close enough.

 

In the lower level of the church there is a beautiful gold star

It has been laid over the place where the trough that

Served as crib

In which he was laid

Was sure to have been.

In the manger.

In the barn below the family of the innkeeper.

 

I am a poetic theologian, not a theologian historian

So I am likely taking

Some small pieces of

Poetic              

               license……..

do not , I say, do not

begin giving me the fifth degree

or the fourth,

or whatever the heck it is.

 

Over details.

 

Now we go to Jerusalem, to the Old City.

2,000 years ago it would have been by foot.

It would have taken some time.

For different reasons

And yet,

Not unlike today

With the checkpoints of illegal occupation by Israel,

No longer Rome…..(which occupied Palestine 2,000 years ago)

Where roads are blocked,

Babies are sometimes born waiting to get through

People die from their heart attacks that cannot wait the hours

That are forced upon them

By arrogant young Israeli Defense Force soldiers.

 

So now in our mind’s eye we come to the last days of

Jesus’ earthly dwelling.

The Holy Sepulcher still has worship services

Of very many different kinds

I have been to several of them.

Amazed to worship in places that are so very,

Very,

Ancient. 

When Jesus was crucified it was in a garbage dump outside of the city known as Golgoltha,

The Rock of Calvary.  (Later the dump was brought within the city walls and became a part of this church in the fourth-century)

Jesus was buried in the Holy Sepulchre,

An unused tomb of a Jesus believer,

And when he rose from the dead on Sunday morning it was

Within the confines of the same

Holy space.

Thus.

The. Secret.  (Not really a secret because it is known.  But if one contemplates it in one’s heart it is like a secret that grows and blooms and speaks to the heart of the one in whom it is planted).

 

The Church of the Holy Sepulcher is the place

Where Jesus was crucified

Buried

And rose again.

 

Thus it is the home of Christianity.

Rome is Empire, which in many ways

Is entirely a different thing.

 

I have been to the church several times.

I remember one of the last times thinking,

How amazing that it has become familiar,

Like a church on my own block at home.

 

How blessed am I to have been in the place of the

Birth.

Been In the place of the

Crucifixion

Burial

And Resurrection.

Not once, but several times to both.

I have also been to Rome

And Vatican City

To the Sistene Chapel.

I was there in 2006 on one of the rare days when the

Museum

Is free , no admission charged

So I went, free, paying no admission

 

I remember thinking,

How can fundamentalists not understand

That God’s ways

Are not

Our ways?

????????????????

 

Looking back I am grateful

That I already understood

The Bible

Not

       To   

              Be

A science book

Or a history book (okay, sometimes I struggle a bit with this, I admit))

And I wonder,

Do they have many fundamentalists show up at the

Museum?

Do they have to call ambulances very often to take

Shock victims to hospital

Or break up fights when fundamentalists try to,

You know,

Destroy a display?

 

Anyhow.

It is time for me to end.

While the genocide in Gaza continues I am not able

To take my poetry away from the

Suffering people

So we shall continue to see

How God works through me in this.

End of mini sermon.  Ameeeeeeeeeeen.

      

https://www.sapiens.org/archaeology/cultural-heritage-gaza-destruction/https://www.sapiens.org/archaeology/cultural-heritage-gaza-destruction/

'Racism, Land and Food' seminar dissects how dispossession negates food sovereignty

'Racism, Land and Food' seminar dissects how dispossession negates food sovereignty: As many communities worldwide battle to get food to the table, a World Council of Churches (WCC) webinar titled ‘Racism, Land and Food' highlighted the intersections of food, land, and racial injustices on food sovereignty over generations of dispossessed groups.

Matriarchy

 I watched a show tonight on Facebook about the Orca Killer Whales of the West Coast.  I learned that the pods are led by grandmother's and knowledge is passed from the grandmothers and mothers to the pods.  I also learned that different pods have different languages.  Or different dialects.  Each pod can tell that the other pods are speaking but they cannot understand the language.

This is so like what I have learned about trees.  Trees have networks that communicate through their roots.  And it is the grandmother trees that pass their knowledge down from generation to generation.  

This seems to be true of indigenous people everywhere, as far as I can tell from my readings.  It seems to me a particular curse of white supremacy that the nuclear family is apparently worshiped, and age is not seen as a crowning achievement but as an affront to youth.  

More on these things as they develop in my mind.

Focus on a New Direction.

 

So cool! There was a webinar for old Gaelic names of Armagh, a county in Ireland....I got to listen to an older gentleman (who was definitely Irish) show his charts and talk about the history of a whole slew of names....some going back to 937AD!!!! It amazes me! I hope they remember to send me their line up of events....I will spend time on a webinar any time I can to get to listen to an Irish brogue for an hour!

4/21/2021

 

I just finished watching for the third or fourth time a documentary on indigenous people throughout the globe and the work to save nature from greed. So I realized at least two things as I watched The Condor and the Eagle.....it seems to be that it is only white settler colonial peoples who exalt independence and self sufficiency. When I look around, figuratively speaking, at the world....it seems like every people group that is not white European or white North American, which is everybody else....that all of the others that are left, which are the indigenous peoples of all nations, understand that we are better in community and in interdependence. So then the next thing that came to me is this: where in the world did white people come from? Are we (I must claim my white Northern European American identity) the only people that are not indigenous somewhere? And if so.....how did that happen? Perhaps white northern Europeans are indigenous to Scandinavia? I would say the colder the climate the whiter the skin except Alaska is cold, as are the northern stretches of Canada, and there are native populations living in both of those places....so that rather kills that argument/thought.

4/21/2021

 

5/21/2021

I am going to confess that I had no idea how long it had been since I had written on this blog.  I think that it tells me how much my pandemic life more or less fell apart.  Hope to become more consistent.  Blessings, Debbie

The Journey now includes learning about systemic racism, poverty, colonialism and climate change.

 

New blog entry. 

9/13/2020

 

Okay.  I have decided that for now this blog will have a new focus.  I am learning about systemic racism and poverty, colonialism and even climate change and how all of these things are interwoven with each other.  I am also learning about antiracism.  I will share this journey in this blog and you are welcome to join me if you like.

 

In reading and in “attending” numerous webinars I have discovered some new ways that I am looking at the United States, North and South America, and even Europe.  Just this minute, as I started typing on this subject,  I realized that I must put in a disclaimer.  I am continuing to learn and I recognize that I am totally a student in these matters.  I also understand that teaching is something that appears to come naturally to me in the sense that it is something I enjoy very much.  I suppose that I can be both a student and a teacher at the same time, however,  I must emphasize that as I am still learning, I may need to make corrections to what I write.  As I make new, or different discoveries, I will do my best to share those with you and make my best attempt to share what has been corrected. 

 

 

In the United States the currently dominant people group is white, caucasion, of European descent.  This is how this group of people seems to be defined in questions on all kinds of forms these days.  As the Han are dominant in China….so it goes.  It seems to me that the dominant people groups in a country are usually descendants from the people that invaded a country in the past.  This would mean that people who were colonizers in the past, settled in the country that had been invaded, and grew in population size to become a larger group than the original inhabitants.

 

In the North American United States of America (also known as Turtle Island by indigenous people) we have Native Americans who were the first people on this continent as far as I have read.  Christopher Columbus thought that he had found India (he was way lost) and named the people he found here Indians…..but that really is not a correct name.  Indians are from India. 

 

Then we have black Americans, currently known as African Americans.  Primarily these are descendants of enslaved people that were taken by force, and without choice, from the continent of Africa, starting about 400 years ago.  They were brought to the Eastern shores of the North American continent and also taken to many other places along the way.  When I taught Theology and Bible at the Nile Theological College in Sudan and South Sudan I had students ask me why there are black people in Haiti.  I really dislike having to explain about the colonial and enslaving history of the United States to other people.  It causes me to be ashamed.  And I was.  However, those students launched me on the path of finding out more about migration, colonialism, etc.  Students are wonderful sources of questions that open up new vistas for learning.  Like the students in China who asked me why the United States was involved in the Vietnam war.  That too was an embarrassing one….

 

At any rate, we have 1.  Native Americans, 2.  African Americans, descendants of enslaved Africans and 3.  The group of people who are white, of European descent and thus descendants of the original colonizers of most of this country.  We also have 4. immigrants from other countries, and 5. refugees from other countries.  6. As well, as the United States expanded her territory to create a land from sea to shining sea, there was land that was appropriated from Mexico.  As it turns out I have read now about how Mexicans and “Americans” moved back and forth freely over the U.S. southern border for a long time because they had been doing that already for many years.  Until that changed.

 

I trust that as I go along in this learning journey I will learn more about people groups that live in the United States, and the reasons that they do.  I am going to stop here for now as this is long enough for a first entry.

Blessings,

Debbie

 

A Hurricane Katrina memory.

 15 years ago I was staying for three months at a guest house in East Jerusalem on the grounds of a hospital that served a Palestinian population. Everyday I saw Muslim women dressed in abayas and everyday I ate green olives in the hospital cafeteria. I was there with an international group as an EAPPI. Ecumenical Accompaniment in Palestine and Israel. I know this because I remember watching the news about Hurricane Katrina on the television with the other people in the group. I was horrified, gripped with sorrow and also mortified because this tragedy was occurring in my country; the country that at that time people looked up to. It is hard to have the failings of ones country splashed across the television set when one is with a group of people from all over the world. Now we've been living that for well over three years

Grief.

I think I am possibly moving a little bit beyond denial and for this moment am understanding that life is not going to unfold as what I had envisioned at one point. I think I am also realizing that this is a grieving process, and it is not 😓going to be linear.

I am "getting" it. This virus has changed life as we know it. This is a grieving process and is not linear.😓