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Founder of Ministry of Money, Don McClanen, Remembered
In February this year Donald David McClanen died at age 91. Today, a memorial service was held for him a Dayspring Retreat Center in rural Maryland. His ashes were interred at the Lake of the Saints on the retreat center property where Don and Gloria lived with their family for much of their lives.
Don McClanen was a remarkable man. And one that changed my life.
On Dec. 7, 1995, 55 ministers and church workers were arrested in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol building for praying and proclaiming the words of the prophet Isaiah, “Woe to the legislators of infamous laws, to those who issue tyrannical decrees, who refuse justice to the unfortunate and cheat the poor among my people of their rights” (10:1-2). Down the halls, Congress was preparing to pass the most drastic cuts to welfare that the U.S. had seen in decades. Since nearly all of us could name someone that we personally knew who would suffer from such draconian “reform” we could do nothing less but bring the power of prayer to bear in that place of illusive worldly power.
After our arrest, we spend many hours held by the Capitol police in a large processing room with desks. Arrestees were paired off in twos, each handcuffed to the same desk until the officer came to process us.
I first met Don McClanen when we spend 6 hours handcuffed together in that police holding area in Advent 1995. I knew him by reputation–as the founder of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Washington LIFT, the Ministry of Money, a mover-and-shaker at the DaySpring Retreat Farm of Church of the Saviour in Maryland, as the inspiration behind the Triad Initiative, and much more–but had never spoken to him.
Since we were literally bound together, he turned to me and said: Rose, how is God moving in your heart? As if my whole spirit had been waiting for that question, my normally reticent self poured out a story about Bosnia.
December 1995 was the tail-end of the former Yugoslavia’s hot war. Since war broke out in 1992 I had been fixated on every detail. From my row house in D.C., I wept and prayed over the award-winning Washington Post articles from Srebrenica, Vukovar, and elsewhere.
Don’s response was, “I’ve made three trips into the war zone so far. On my next trip, I’m taking you with me.”
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Turkey Coup: People v Tank
Turkish military coup seems to have been swiftly put down, but not without lives lost. Real heroes are the Turkish people who took to the streets to defend their country. This photo captures what courageous, unarmed civilian resistance looks like.
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Mary Cosby, Cofounder of the Landmark Church of the Saviour, Dies at 93
N. Gordon Cosby and Mary Campbell Cosby Mary Campbell Cosby, cofounder of the Church of the Saviour movement she launched with her husband and partner Rev. N. Gordon Cosby in the 1940s, died this week in Washington, D.C. She was 93 years old.
News of her passing spread quickly on July 3. Kayla McClurg sent an email to family and friends saying, “I am writing to let you know that our dear Mary Cosby passed away very gently and suddenly this afternoon at Christ House.”
Both Gordon and Mary Cosby were influential in the life of Sojourners community and ministries. When the early Sojourners community decided to leave Chicago in the mid-1970s, they migrated to Washington, D.C., in large part because of the presence of Mary and Gordon Cosby and the community they’d founded at Church of the Saviour.
“Gordon and Mary and Church of the Saviour were one of the most important reasons that Sojourners decided to come to Washington in 1975,” said Jim Wallis, co-founder of Sojourners. “And we have been spiritually intertwined ever since. For Sojourners, Gordon and Mary were mentors, elders, inspirers, supporters, encouragers, and challengers.”
I took several classes with Mary Cosby. She was funny, cut-to-the-quick deep, gracious, steeped in Southern hospitality — and let nothing slide by. In 2009, I asked if I could interview her on the theme of “forgiveness.”With a twinkle in her eye, she replied: “I wouldn’t say that I am at all qualified on the topic of forgiveness.”
“Learning how to forgive should get easier the older you get,” she said. “And I think it does. Because I think sometimes you do an act of the will before you ever feel it. The older I get I think it’s important to do things as an act of the will and let the feelings come later. But if you are drowned in feelings all the time then you are just an emotional bundle and that doesn’t do a lot of good for anybody.
“Forgiveness is probably the basic thing that Christians need to learn. I think parents need to learn it from their children and children need to learn it from their parents. All of them need to learn it from each other. And all of us need to learn it from each other. I think some of the great pains in churches has been a lack of forgiveness among members who are committed to forgiveness and who talk about it and who accept Jesus’ forgiveness but hold grudges themselves.”
According to McClurg, Mary Cosby had been experiencing weakness the past few days. On July 3, however, she “insisted” on going to worship in the morning as usual. “Although tired in the afternoon and starting to have difficulty talking,” said McClurg, “we thought maybe she just needed to rest. When I stopped in about 1 p.m., we sang hymns, prayed and spoke of Gordon. Someone earlier had said, ‘Gordon will be right there ready to meet you,’ to which she whispered, ‘He’d better be!’”
McClurg reported speaking to Mary Cosby on July 2. “We talked about the usual subjects,” she said, “the richness of her life and all the people she has loved. When someone was asking her if she had any pain, she said no. She looked over at me and said, ‘You know, they forget that I am 93!’”
Church of the Saviour has created dozens of nonprofit organizations, including many well-known groups that serve the poor in Northwest Washington. They include Jubilee Housing, which provides affordable housing; Potter’s House bookstore in Adams Morgan; Christ House, a medical facility for the homeless; For the Love of Children tutoring; Sitar Arts Center; and many others.
Mary and Gordon both lived at Christ House on Columbia Road in their elder years. Gordon Cosby died on March 20, 2013. Mary Cosby died at Christ House on July 3 (on what would have been her husband’s 99th birthday).
So with her sense of humor and great dignity intact, Mary Cosby has made the grand transition.
Rose Marie Berger is a senior associate editor for Sojourners magazine. This column first appeared on sojo.net.
See “Just Forgive” by Rose Marie Berger for her interview with Mary Cosby in March 2009 Sojourners magazine.
See a tribute to Mary Cosby in Callings (Fall 2015, Church of the Saviour)
See a video tribute to Mary Cosby from the “Faith in Action” series
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Ched Myers: Europe’s Church Without Borders
Our God Is Undocumented, a book of “applied Christian ethics” by theologian-activist Ched Myers and Presbyterian pastor and immigrant advocate Matthew Colwell, is now out in Swedish! Below is an excerpt from the new introduction that addresses the upheaval in Europe with mass migrations and how the church can model a response:“The work of wrestling with “the prospects and problems of becoming a church without borders” in northern Europe is already well underway. I encourage Scandinavian Christians not to see immigrant rights solely as the responsibility of their governments. While advocating for just public policies is important work for our churches, ultimately we must determine how we shall embody the biblical imperatives of hospitality and solidarity with the immigrant poor regardless of what the State decides. And let us never forget that our privileged nations are deeply complicit in the global forces of conflict, inequality and oppression that displace vulnerable people from their beloved homelands to our doorsteps.
I pray that the Spirit will disrupt our ecclesial and social “business as usual” as She did at the birth of the church (Acts 2), afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted. May our tongues be loosened to proclaim God’s justice, and the doors of our communities opened to embrace the homeless immigrant Christ.”–Ched Myers, foreword to Swedish edition of Our God is Undocumented
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June 17: Heroes and Pioneers in the Faith
Currently I’m reading Mario Vargas Llosa’s El sueño del celta (The Dream of the Celt) about the life of forgotten human-rights advocate Sir Roger Casement (see Casement’s famous Statement before the Dock) who exposed colonial and corporate barbarism in Congo, Brazil, Peru, and Ireland at the beginning of the 20th century.
In recounting the story of Casement, Vargas Llosa reminds me again of the writer of the letter to the Hebrews: “Do you not see what this means–all these pioneers who blazed the way, all these veterans cheering us on? It means we’d better get on with it. Strip down, start running—and never quit! No extra spiritual fat, no parasitic sins. Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we’re in. Study how he did it. Because he never lost sight of where he was headed—that exhilarating finish in and with God …” (12:1-2, Message).
So here are a few of those witnesses and pioneers for the date of 17 June:
Arsenal Monument, D.C. 1864: Twenty-one young women and girls making cartridges for the Union Army at the Washington, D.C. arsenal during the Civil War are killed in an accidental explosion. Most of the victims were Irish immigrants. A monument was erected in the Congressional Cemetery, where 17 of the workers were buried.
1873: Susan B. Anthony goes on trial in Canandaigua, N.Y., for casting her ballot in a federal election the previous November, in violation of existing statutes barring women from the vote.
1903: Mary Harris “Mother” Jones leads a rally in Philadelphia to focus public attention on children mutilated in the state’s textile mills. Three weeks later the 73-year-old will lead a march to New York City to plead with President Theodore Roosevelt to help improve conditions for the children. -
Chris Antal Refuses to be Military’s ‘House Priest’
Chris Antal is a minister with the Unitarian Universalist Congregation at Rock Tavern, New York. He served as a U.S. Army chaplain in Afghanistan before publicly resigning this week over the Obama administration’s drone warfare program.By voluntarily resigning over his continued concerns about drone warfare, he forfeits benefits that otherwise would have accrued to him through his eight years of service in the U.S. Army Reserve.
Below is the letter he wrote to President Obama in April.
Dear Mr. President:
I hereby resign my commission as an Officer in the United States Army.
I resign because I refuse to support U.S. armed drone policy. The Executive Branch continues to claim the right to kill anyone, anywhere on earth, at any time, for secret reasons, based on secret evidence, in a secret process, undertaken by unidentified officials. I refuse to support this policy of unaccountable killing.
I resign because I refuse to support U.S. nuclear weapons policy. The Executive Branch continues to invest billions of dollars into nuclear weapons, which threaten the existence of humankind and the earth. I refuse to support this policy of terror and mutually assured destruction.
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Video: Ave Maria with Jazzy Feet
http://swf.tubechop.com/tubechop.swf?vurl=gQ4A5ObRLyY&start=1455&end=1718.65&cid=8097145
The Vietnamese community at St. Boniface in San Francisco celebrates Mary, Mother of God, with a 30-minute sequence of liturgical dance, music, and prayer.
The clip above is the 4-minute finale in which the littlest children provide a jazzy conclusion.
Pope Francis has a lot to say about “popular devotions,” like what we see in this video. Popular devotions are those para-liturgical acts of piety performed by those who some deem as “poor” or “less educated” or not the “dominant culture.”
Pope Francis writes: “I think of the steadfast faith for those mothers tending their sick children who, though perhaps barely familiar with the articles of the creed, cling to a rosary; or of all the hope poured into a candle lighted in a humble home with prayer for help from Mary, or in the gaze of tender love directed to Christ crucified.”
The Vietnamese community at St. Boniface reminds me that piety is embodied in joy.
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Elizabeth Warren: Trump v ‘Equal Justice Under Law’
This is an important half-hour speech by Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
“Donald Trump chose racism as his weapon, but his aim is exactly the same as the rest of the Republicans: pound the courts into submission for the rich and the powerful.”–Elizabeth Warren
Senator Elizabeth Warren Remarks at American Constitution Society Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren harshly criticized Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump for his comments against U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel who’s overseeing a lawsuit against the now defunct Trump University. Warren called the real estate mogul a “thin-skinned, racist bully” and a “wannabe tyrant” who should never be president of the United States.
She lays out a Republican attack on the U.S. judiciary system, reminding that judges cannot publicly defend themselves against attack. So the rest of us must defend them. She gave these comments at the annual national convention of the American Constitution Society in Washington, D.C. The ACS is a progressive legal organization formed in 2001 in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling on the Gore-Bush election.
(FYI: She got a standing O.)
For the full video, go to CSPAN.
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‘Elijah: Why Are You Here?’
From today’s scripture and reflection:“When he heard this, Elijah hid his face in his cloak and went and stood at the entrance of the cave. A voice said to him, ‘Elijah, why are you here?’”–1 Kings 19:13
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“In the book of Exodus, God manifests to all the non-prophets at Mount Sinai as unbearably loud noise. The people are terrified, and beg for God to speak only to Moses; their prophet can then translate what God says into words spoken at a reasonable decibel level.
But in the book of Elijah, when the prophet hears God ask him a question in words—Why are you here, Elijah?—he answers defensively, stuck in a repetitive loop of his own words, his own story about himself. Any further insight from God cannot get through. So God resorts to non-verbal communication.
Elijah hears the windstorm, the earthquake, and the fire. Then he hears God in the “still, small voice,” the faint sound of quietness. But he does not understand.
Does God manifest to us, sometimes, as quietness? Can we understand?”–Melissa Carpenter (see torahsparks.com)
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“He [Elijah] is bidden to return by the road he came. He is to anoint kings, and in due time appoint a prophet who will succeed him. An epiphany. But no ease, no relief. Something more, something surpassing expectation and effort. As Moses, so Elijah.”–Daniel Berrigan, The Kings and Their Gods
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Rabbi Waskow: Crossing These (Election) Thresholds
Rabbi Waskow at the Shalom Center provides sharp insight into the American soul:In this election campaign, the American people came to the edge of three thresholds. We crossed two of them and turned back from the third.
The first threshold was the choice of a fascist to be the Presidential nominee of a major party, with the strong support of voters who feel excluded, both economically and culturally, from the emerging new America.
The second was the choice of a woman to be the Presidential nomine of the other major party, with the strong support of the two largest racial minorities in American society. Crossing that threshold, on the basis of that support, looks toward the redemption of several anti-democratic elements that have dogged American history. Looks toward, but does not fulfill, the redemption we need.
The third threshold was to face up to the crucial fact that while the continuing impact of racism is one of the deep issues facing the American people, another is the widening gulf of economic inequality and the power that gives to Hyperwealth and Corporate Pharaohs. Among them are the Carbon Pharaohs that are burning the Earth, our common home –- committing global arson for the sake of their profit and power.
The great majority of younger voters did face up to that truth, but the majority of voters turned back at the edge – for now. But the question will not disappear, and answering it will require not only election campaigns but also a movement that can bring together responses to racism, responses to economic domination, and responses to cultural marginalization.
All three of these decisions the American public has just taken force us to face questions more profound than even who gets elected President this fall – though that choice will itself deeply shape the American future.
Boiling beneath the election returns are five questions. They are expressed in politics, but they are deeper than politics. At bottom they call into question not only individual spiritual yearnings but the spiritual life of our society as a whole:
1. How can we address the real fear and rage felt by many of those “original Americans” who voted for Trump, as they feel “their country” being swept away from them by Blacks, Latinos, Muslims, immigrants, feminist women, and GLBTQ people? — and all while not only their incomes but even their very life expectancies are falling, for the first time in American history?
Read the rest here.
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Rose Marie Berger 