beatification

Many years ago when I was at home with small children I had little if any time to look at the news. I did not know it at the time, but I was really out of touch with what was going on in the world - especially here in the Western Hemisphere. Much much later in my life I had the opportunity to get know a man from Guatemala. Over time, he shared his personal story with me. He was a teenager when the Latin America civil wars raged across Central America. His stories were very powerful and because of his stories I was motivated to read some history regarding the revolutions and counter-revolutions that took so many lives and created so much havoc.
I was actually stunned when I learned how involved the United States had been in the on going political chaos. You could call me naive, but really I was just a typical mother whose time was fully taken up with caring for babies and young children who were totally dependent on me. In its own way it was a blessing not to know since I could not have done anything anyway.
Yesterday when Archbishop Oscar Romero was beatified ( a step on the way to sainthood in the Catholic tradition ) the tension of those past times became more understandable to me. I am committed to non-violence and therefore I am not a proponent of war or violent revolution. That does not mean that I advocate pacifism which is an entirely different mindset altogether. I just don't see the point in killing to stop killing. Compassionate living, the kind of compassionate living that avoids harm to all other life forms, is not easy. It takes thought and planning and often requires large doses of humility in order to ask for forgiveness when harm occurs unintentionally.     
Being committed to non-violence does not mean never getting angry and wanting to stop someone or something that is harmful. People who actively practice non-violence often put themselves at risk rather than using violence against others. It takes a lot of courage not to run or look for a weapon when there is the potential of harm to oneself.
Archbishop Oscar Romero spoke out against injustice. He repeatedly put himself in between the poor of El Salvador and the oppressive military regime. He pleaded publicly for an end to armed conflict - at times begging the military to lay down their weapons. El Salvador was a predominantly Catholic country so the people who were killing were members of Romero's church as well as those who were being killed. For raising his voice Romero was assassinated. But his strength, and his commitment to non-violence lived on wherever the poor struggled for justice without violence.

The victory that was achieved yesterday when Romero was beatified may be hard for people outside the community of faith to understand because it is rooted in the controversy around Liberation Theology. Liberation Theology has at its core a preferential option for the poor with the belief that all people everywhere have the right to live with their basic needs met and enough freedom to live their lives as they choose. Because of the injustice that exists in post-colonial Latin America, and in other countries where the disparity between rich and poor is not only racially based, but also a direct effect of the conquest of one people by another, Liberation Theology is entrenched. Inspired by Liberation Theology many of the poor and oppressed together chose to stand up to the government and demand freedom from fear and violence. They also demanded access to the goods that met their basic needs. The strategies they used were non-violent and faithful to the teachings of Jesus- and many people were killed. Many people fled over the borders to the north seeking asylum as my friend did. It was a terrible time of death squads and disappearances as some of the oppressed took up the same methods as their oppressors and became armed insurrectionists.

It is because of the fact that some of the poor who were loved and defended by Romero became armed insurrectionists that Romero, and Liberation Theology in general, created such tension within the church. Was Oscar Romero a political figure as his detractors and eventual assassins claimed? Or was he a man of faith willing to stand up regardless of the personal cost?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi. Sr. Dorothy Stang. Oscar Romero.
It doesn't take too much thought to come up with the names of others who have been in the center of controversy because of their faithful work.

I look forward to the time when Oscar Romero is added to the calendar of Saints   
    

mother's day

On Mother's Day I went to see my mother as I always do on Sunday afternoon.
She is tucked safely away in a place where other people, often strangers, bustle about taking care of her. The strangers come and go. Some have cheerful dispositions and lift the atmosphere from foggy depression to misty nostalgia. Others barely notice the way their presence can alter the space as they efficiently place trays of food that is mashed and pureed on the tables in front of the residents and straighten the "clothing protectors" that are really bibs for adult people who have drifted backward to childhood.
My mother is beautiful. She always has been. She is petite and graceful even now with her limited movements, and she is delicate of skin and complexion. Inside she had the strength she needed to raise children and make a positive mark in her sphere of influence. She also had wounds and frailties over which she had no control or understanding. When I see her now I am struck by the grace which she has retained even as she has become dependent and cut off from the world. Nonetheless, it is hard to go week after week knowing that she is often unable to respond with any sign of recognition.

My children and grandchildren came over in the early evening of Mother's Day. My husband had prepared brown rice and some white beans and the children brought fresh vegetables, salsa, seasoned tempeh and corn tortillas. We brought out the wine and it was a delicious gluten free vegan meal. After several hours of talk we decided to go on a walk down the trolley trail which has been entirely renovated since the time our grown children were last out for a walk on the old trail. We walked about a mile together, looking at the art and  enjoying one another's company. It was a happy day.
In many ways I am like my mother so her frailty of mind worries me. As I age I pray that I will be able to maintain my mental health a little better than my mom. I accept that this requires action on my part. Unless I am willing to continue seeking knowledge, using my mind actively and working to maintain my overall health prayer will not be enough.
It was not until my mother was 90 years old that her stomach and skin issues were attributed to celiac -- which is an extreme intolerance to gluten. After taking her off gluten her stomach issues decreased and her skin became soft and smooth - something I had never seen before. My mother's awareness increased as well but the many years of ingesting something that had been unhealthy for her had taken their toll. The little strokes that took most of her speech away, the broken hip bones, the twisting progress of arthritis, all of these cannot be undone. Certainly not all of her issues are related to gluten, but a number of them are, either directly or indirectly because the physical strain left her depressed and unable to take good care of herself. The experience has made the rest of the family look hard at how we live and how we eat.
The food industry changed a lot during my mother's lifetime. Foods that she thought of as healthy and good, like milk and meat, were not engineered in factory farms when she was a girl. Pesticides, antibiotics and GMO's were not a worry to her. Like most people of her generation she didn't know when significant changes in agriculture became detrimental to human health and she continued to buy what was cheap, readily available or on sale.
The move away from animal products, from sugary foods and gluten did not come all at once in my family but most of us feel better for the changes we have made. There are no guarantees but if I can do things now that will give me a better chance of having all my wits about me in the future then I want to do those things if for no other reason than to spare my children and grandchildren years of painful visits, or the guilt that comes when visiting seems too hard.

 

   

Adding things up

I remember when pocket calculators first came out. It was such a novel way to find the answer to math problems. I didn't trust them however. I always did the math by hand to make sure the calculator was correct. Today of course I rely on calculators and rarely, when I have done some math by hand I find I will check my answers on a calculator.
I am just about finished with a book by Denis Edwards titled Ecology at the Heart of Faith. Edwards writes of the emergence of life, of the evolution that occurs in the process of living and dying, and the movement from simplicity toward complexity. At one point he refers to Teilhard de Chardin's work with its expectation that future evolutionary increases in complexity will be in the mind having already become complex in the spheres of matter and life.
I am sure that many would see in the technological advances of human society reflections of the growing complexity of the mind. Life in post modern reality is certainly filled with ingenious inventions and complex techno forms of social interactions but there does seem to be some downsides to the advances that have been made. Most children no longer learn to do calculations without the assistance of a calculator of some kind. Most adults have no need to use some of the rote math skills they once learned though I am sure that more than a few people are relieved that they can now carry a calculator in their pocket or purse to make up for what they didn't learn very well.
Memorizing poems or scripture or stories is really a lost art because of course memorizing is not necessary. A favorite verse can be quickly found online and with a smart phone is immediately accessible. The same is true for data of any kind. Need to know who won a world series or what year the Challenger exploded? Just type it in. There was a time when my husband used to be the source of knowledge for a circle of friends because he is a book lover and knows how to look things up. The change from being a wise man to extraneous among a younger generation came quickly, in a matter of a year or two,  as the cost of smart phones dropped into the reach of the working class. All of this might be good for information sharing but I don't think that it reflects any increasing complexity of the mind. Data from a computer is generally data without context and is not as likely to be remembered once it is found for its immediate use.
Without memorizing, great blocks of mind are not used. No one needs to remember a phone number or even an address. Stories can be read over and over exactly as they are written but the art of weaving the present moment into a tale from the past comes from the work of memorizing and translating what is known into the story.
I read once that the children of technology giants are sent to schools where they cannot use the technology their parents have contributed to inventing. It seems these people are aware that unless the child uses the mind they have been given, they will not grow up with the intellectual prowess needed to make the advances their parents did. I found that article pretty telling.
My husband uses an abacus weekly as he balances his checkbook. I appreciate that he has the patience and will to do so. I know it keeps his mind sharp. I have never learned to use one. For me it is a relic of a time centuries before the slide rule - another tool I never really mastered. I used to be pretty good at calculating with pencil and paper, and I can still do it if needed but I've grown lazy over time.
When I look around I think that we humans are in a dumbing down phase rather than increasing in complexity. Perhaps the trouble is that we are impatient. We would like to achieve the super mind envisioned in science fiction but we want it now so we imitate the achievement by using smart phones and computers and such and in so doing, we interrupt the evolutionary process of the mind.
Might be time to let the contract on my smart phone lapse.