grace in the 'cuse

Racism? Yeah, We're Goin' There

It is easy not to talk about race at Grace Church--or the Episcopal Campus Ministry at Syracuse University for that matter.  It is easy not to talk about it because both communities are amazingly diverse in race and class and we take the ease with which we get along for granted.  At the same time, we readily acknowledge that we live in a bubble of harmony--the rest of the world is not like this--and it should be.

So we're going to talk about it.  And we're going to help others to talk about it.  The "it" is the prejudice and bias that we all carry while living into God's call to us to be agents of reconciliation.  As the old saying goes, we all have issues.  And we all have issues with bias, prejudice and racism.  But if we talk about it, peel back the layers and go deeper with it, then we might be transformed and in turn transform the world.

The bishops of the Episcopal Church have been talking about this too.  They wrote a pretty radical pastoral letter to the church about it.  Check it out here.  Read, post a comment, and let the conversation begin.

Hunger and Poverty Resource

I can't tell you how excited I am about our recent newsletter--the Spirit of Grace.  The focus is on hunger and poverty issues in our community.  We included a very cool color map of our surrounding area denoting the areas of greatest food insecurity--it isn't what I expected.  Hunger exists in surprising places.

I was at a lecture on Friday on the Radical Politics of Hunger--a great presentation on the Blank Panther Party's Free Breakfast for Children program in Milwaukee back in the 1960s.  This program ended up being co-opted by the U.S. government and turned into the free breakfast school programs many know today.  But the surprise was the high the percentage of food insecure homes in our country--some 12%!  These are homes that cannot necessarily count on eating three meals a day.  It is a stunning statistic in our oh so wealthy country.

I've just found this link that has a lot of info on food insecurity and poverty in America.  Check it out.  The World Hunger Year website even has programs for middle and high school students to learn about these issues.   Hmmm...not a bad complement to all those youth cooking classes.  What does it say about our country that so many are hungry and malnourished?  How whack is it that we admire those who can eat whatever they want and choose not to in the name of thinness and some beauty ideal, while others die of obesity related illness and still others go to bed hungry?  Good grief.

Making memories at the table

When I was a kid, growing up in a small apartment in New York City, the dining table was the center of the home.  It wasn't the center the way kitchens are now designed and understood to be the functional center of a home.  It was the center because there was no where else to go.  Our living room had a television going all the time, our bedrooms were full but we didn't have desks.  And our apartment was not a Classic Six  where one could retire to a study or family room.

In our apartment, the kitchen table was study space, family room, and, of course, eating space.  The kitchen table was in a small space adjacent to our tiny kitchen (there were two tiny counters, a sink, a small stove, and small fridge).  Actually, the dining area was nearly too small to contain our round table and four chairs.  Somehow, though, it all seemed adequate--this is where I learned to cook great meals.  But it was on this small table that we ate those meals, and did our homework, and played Backgammon on long, lazy, Sunday afternoons.  This was the table where I would pour out my heart to my mother about my latest "boy troubles" after school each day (well, maybe not all of my heart...I was a teen too, once upon a time.) 

Anyway, as I sat around another dining table on Monday, in the home of my friend Susan--who is one of the writers on the Greenblade Justice Journal --I couldn't help but think of how important these tables have been in my life.  Over a simple, yet extravagant, lunch of tomato soup (a nice chunky one with bits of carrots and topped with shredded purple basil), a baguette and cheeses, and ravioli coated lightly in butter and parmesan, and a mix of figs, Dagoba chocolate, and these wonderful slim cookies that were a cross between shortbread and biscotti (but with cocao nibs!!!), over this meal the four of us laughed, dreamed, wrestled with food justice issues, and listened deeply to each other.

This is what I want church to be like.  I want our altar to be the place that holds those memories and echoes to us the memories we make around the "dining tables" in our parish hall, in our homes, in restaurants, in the park.  Fast food church will not cut it.  Thankfully, that is not mode that Grace reverts to, but it can be tempting...  We are called to something so much deeper and whole.  Can the altar where we celebrate Eucharist really be the center of the action for us?  Can it teach us to offer radical hospitality at our own dining tables?  Just how do we meet the spiritual and physical hungers of our community?  Want to talk about it?