Hi, TT, Lupita...
No facts to add, too drained, but please find them here:
www.savedarfur.orgOur minister was brilliant this morning. His sermon was brief (he has a naturally quiet demeanor, so his passion only comes through in what he has to say). What I respect about his writing about confronting devastating realities, is that he honors and names the emotions we are feeling. He tells a story or two to help us visualize (I had been doing this for some weeks)...the children, mainly. And then he says, anger is normally our way of avoiding the pain. Feel this story, he says very quietly, and stay with it for a moment, stay... I'll post it when he finalizes it, usually takes him a while.
I offered a reminiscence about my childhood where the world didn't come to me through a television (we didn't have one until I was 14--I felt deprived then but am now so grateful) but through my father's globe "They are there, and we are here"...and how world felt real to me, not an abstraction, because my father communed so seriously with the globe and maps every night...I thought of the world and its peoples as present. I led a responsive reading from MLKJr, and did two other bits, the Call to Worship and a reading from Thich Nhat Hahn I think I posted on another thread.
I hadn't wept as a worship leader before but did today, because when he asked us to be present to the pain I felt it was my duty. So I just sat and sort of leaked tears, but I didn't lose my part.
I was blowing my nose when it was time to put out the chalice flame, but nobody cared. The congregation seemed very moved and a lot of people said Thank you. I think it's because he is so very skillful at honoring what people feel and iniviting (rather than lecturing) them to move through it together. And for some reason we work together well.
He said he feels we must not try to feel this kind of pain alone, but in community. And I thought how much better I would feel about helplessness to ease suffering if I simply made a ritual time in my life, say for example the hour before church each Sunday, when I wrote letters and do what I can that way. Every letter to a representative is considered the opinion of 1000 citizens, I've heard.
Thank you for asking, guys. I'm wiped out. But I think it helped those who came. (I noticed attendance was down, and I think that's because it's so hard to face Sudan.)
love,
Hops