Cat Theology

I sat with my friend on her porch, having what she called “coffee with God.” We sat in comfortable silence, watching the cat for a moment. For a few minutes, my mind was racing for something to say, maybe even something profound. It is easy, as a seminary student, to think that I need something useful to say, something that will be insightful and provocative. Nothing came. So I went back to watching the cat. My friend laughed and wondered if there was anything such thing as “cat theology.” But I still had nothing profound or even moderately interesting to say. So I just watched the cat. The cat rubbed against our legs and stalked out past the garden of peas and kale to pause in the grass and the sun. His green eyes watched everything.

I never did come up with anything to say. My fuzzy morning mind just thought about the cat. As we came to a close, I suddenly realized that the cat was a great theology teacher. He was living in the moment, basking in the joy of simply being. He had no particular agenda, no need for a speech or great idea. He just lived for the sun and the grass and human touch. On the porch that day, I had a moment to simply be. I wondered if that wasn’t the greatest gift of all. I needed more time to simply be, to revel in the natural world, to notice the sun on my face and the shoots in the garden and the bird flitting in the trees.

Thoughts at a Deathbed

I have spent a lot of time at deathbeds this summer. It has reminded me of all the people I have known and loved who have died. It has also made me think about my own theology and spirituality around death. Last week, I sat with a man who was begging his brother to hang in there, to keep breathing. The prognosis was not good and the man was so thin and so frail that he looked like he would leave at any moment. This family had done everything—tubes, heart surgery, more tubes, and yet now here he was, battered and fighting to breathe and still the brother begs him to stay alive. My heart went out to both men as I sat at the bedside. I understand wanting to do everything you can to save the life of the one you love. I would want the same.

But sometimes I wonder, at what cost? Can we, who have learned to go to great lengths to save a life, also learn to let go?

I wonder if we thought of death in a more positive and holistic way; what would change? Death for family members is a great loss. But what if we could also think about death as a great passage, as part of the whole cycle of life, as something to celebrate as well as to mourn? Could we, instead of avoiding it at all costs, embrace it as a part of life?

We resist death so much in this culture. We don’t want to accept it and we don’t know how to celebrate it. Yet, it can be celebrated. It is a vital part of life. Where are our ceremonies allowing the departed to leave? Where are our vigils, preparing the loved one for death? Where is the chanting, the mourning, the letting go? We are so busy fighting that there is no time to usher out the dying in peace. It is part of the great cycle of life—just as fall gives way to winter and the tree dies to give life the soil. Just like the sun sets after it rises and the river melts into the wide ocean. It is part of the journey, the life cycle that is greater than us and goes on after us.

It has become a practice on nights when I come back from these events, to spend time under the night sky and under the stars. I find being outside in the world, in nature, tremendously healing. It reminds me of the vastness of the web of life and the cycle of life and death that we witness and participate in.

Healing and Tragedy

This week, my CPE group was deeply impacted by a now public event earlier this week. Early Tuesday morning, a woman came into the emergency room, gave birth in the ER bathroom, and left the baby tied up in the trash can. Thankfully, a nurse discovered the child shortly afterwards and resuscitated him. The baby has survived and was airlifted to a larger hospital. The mother is now in the Thurston County Jail.

The news has been all over the story, reporting that the woman had come into the ER claiming to be a cancer patient and that her boyfriend had no idea she was pregnant. The event has been shocking and difficult for everyone. I have struggled with two conflicting emotions. First, concern for the baby, who was pre-term and nearly died. Second, I have struggled with trying to understand the mother.

What depth of pain, despair, and desperation would lead a mother to throw a baby in the trash? Of course, people and media judge her harshly. I do not underestimate the horror of the situation, nor this woman’s responsibility for harming her child. But I also wonder how healing can be found in a situation like this.

I think of this woman, now sitting in a jail cell, with little or no access to mental health workers, spiritual care, or support of any kind. She is a criminal and so has lost all right to be treated as fully human. Our society has designed a criminal justice system that is punitive, not healing. This woman, who clearly struggles with mental health issues, will likely have little access to anything that will help her. The most likely scenario is that she will become less and less able to live as a responsible member of the community. When society seeks to punish, we only continue the cycle of violence.

What is it in communities that we need to punish instead of heal? How can a community facilitate a process of healing and forgiveness? Can we, as a community, forgive such a terrible act and work toward restoration?

People near the situation who had part in the care of the baby cannot find it in their hearts to forgive. And I don’t think they have to. If the child survives, he will probably never forgive the woman who just threw him away. And he should not have to. But, in the wider community, can a place be found for healing the woman who, in an act of perverse desperation, abandoned a tiny life?

How is CPE going?

Everyone keeps asking me, "How is CPE going?" For those of you who don't know what it is, it is "Clinical Pastoral Education," a program designed to give an intensive unit of hospital chaplaincy and group processing and required by many mainline denominations before ordination. It is a great idea-- make sure that the people you are going to ordain have experience with the hidden and painful sides of human existence (and with their own hidden demons around that) before sending them off.


I am doing an intensive summer unit in Olympia, WA. On one hand, I had difficulty adjusting to working in a hospital environment. Not only is it a vast institution with little natural light and lots of activity, it is terribly impersonal. There is a vast system, in which everyone present is simply a cog in the wheel. Patients are numbered and checked, everyone has a specialized place to be. Chaplains are assigned to make sure that people stay calm during this loss of control, that they can find the inner strength to fight their personal demons. However, I have also met amazing people who do amazing work.

And I enjoy talking with patients. I’ve had wonderful conversations—some spiritual and some not so much. I have chatted with a cancer patient about his dogs, prayed with a woman who is dying, listened to a family’s midnight heartbreak when husband and father unexpectedly died, and played cards with patients in the psychiatric unit. I have fallen in love with people all over again. I have also been learning that my ministry style is primarily listening to people tell their stories. I do not come to rooms with a toolkit of advice, just with a listening ear. And I find Christ among those I talk with. This is a deeply spiritual experience for me. When I pray in the morning in the chapel, I often stand before the crucifix and pray to see the crucified Christ in the people I meet with. And, without fail, I do.

Class and Activists

The more I think about it, the more I realize how we will never build a real, effective movement for change if we do not recognize class differences. I have noticed my own struggles as a working class woman in middle class organizing situations. There are strong cultural differences that get in the way. Here are some that I have noticed…

•Middle class, especially young, activists are proud of their subculture of healthy food, scruffy clothes, and communal living. I understand this, and even participate in some of it, but it is still jarring for me to walk into a young college activist group. I grew up in a working class family, where cleanliness, good hygiene, and home cooked meat and potatoes or great enchiladas were the norm.

•Middle class activists are strongly anti-military. I am both a pacifist (and strongly anti-war) and have family members in the military. For working class and rural people, the military is a source of economic survival and many young people who feel they have no other options join. Middle class activists often don’t seem to understand this reality and can make blanket assumptions and cruel comments about military personal.

•Middle class radicals love the earth. They may even grow an organic garden on a city lot. As a rural farm girl, however, I am amused by the lack of practical understanding that urban, middle class activists have of rural living. For example, urban environmental activists won a great victory in the 90s when they were able to shut down national forests to logging. However, for the people of my hometown, that also meant that the local economy collapsed. Poverty has skyrocketed and fueled a mass exodus from the area. I grew up in the forests and love them deeply, but I also feel deeply for the people who lost their jobs. Isn’t there a way that rural people and environmentalists could have worked together to find a solution that would benefit all?

•There are a lot of stereotypes of rural, working class people. They are rednecks, homophobes, backwards… and the list goes on. Sometimes radical middle class activists use these stereotypes themselves. The reality is that working class culture in general can be rich in hospitality, acceptance, and community.

•The response of people on the left that irritates me the most is the insinuation that working class people are less intelligent, especially if they are more conservative. There is a crass elitism in these assumptions. The accusation that working people are simply stupid, brainwashed, and uneducated is insulting. Some of the most intelligent people I know never went to college.

Oscar Romero and the Cross

Thirty-one years ago today, Oscar Romero was assassinated in El Salvador.

Those of us who are progressive theologians in the United States are generally skeptical of the language of sacrifice, and for good reason. We have seen it abused in so many ways. Women have been told for centuries to “bear their cross like Jesus” and endure domestic violence. Children have been abused in the name of a Father God who put his own Son to death. And, if we are honest with ourselves, we just don’t like to think too much about blood and pain. We would rather envision a happy Jesus, a resurrected Christ.

I wonder, though, for a person like Oscar Romero, who watched friends and parish members die all around him, if the image of a dying Christ was not some comfort, an image of solidarity.

Oscar Romero was appointed archbishop of El Salvador in 1977 during some of the most violent and repressive years just preceding the Salvadoran civil war, a time when the military was torturing and killing any who resisted their rule. The 70s and 80s were years of civil war and political infighting. Interestingly, Romero was chosen because he was viewed as a moderate who would not bother with political issues, who would keep the Catholic Church closely aligned with the rich and powerful. He had been educated in Italy and was known as a bookish sort of man, certainly not a revolutionary, not a prophet.

Just a few weeks after he took office, Father Rutilio Grande, a close friend of Romero’s, was assassinated for his political leanings, along with two of his parishioners. From this time on, Romero’s views changed drastically as he became more and more aware of the suffering of the poor around him. As archbishop, he was strongly influenced by liberation theology, so strongly in fact, that the Reagan administration labeled liberation theology a threat to national security. After only three years as archbishop, 31 years ago today, Romero was assassinated by a paramilitary member. He was one of at least 75,000 people who died during this time in El Salvador, including 16 priests and 4 Maryknoll nuns.

It seems to me, in this context of suffering and death, that the cross took a whole different meaning. In 1998, toward the close of the El Salvador wars, the Oscar Romero Pastoral Center reflected on what the cross meant to them. They noted that, more and more, the official Roman Catholic hierarchy was stressing the life of Jesus and his resurrection and minimizing the cross. But they also noted that the people of El Salvador still clung to the image of the cross, “because the poor and oppressed have identified since the beginning with the suffering of Jesus on the cross that has been associated with their own suffering, cruel and unjust, imposed and inescapable, which accompanies them from birth to death.” They ask this; “The wise should not be scandalized and the powerful should not make fun of the poor when they are seen walking behind a dead Christ.” In this dead Christ, they see their own suffering. Jesus in solidarity with them, giving them the dignity the rest of the world denies them. One of the martyred priests of El Salvador, tortured and murdered in the college complex he taught in, Ignacio Ellacuría said to his people; “You are the crucified people, the presence of Christ crucified in history.”

And what does it mean to stand with these crucified people in history?

For Jesus, who said that he had come to preach good news to the poor and proclaim a kingdom of justice, it meant his life. In our gospel passage, Jesus foresees his death, as he puts it, that “his hour has come.” Knowing this, he still set his face toward Jerusalem, to preach truth to power. As Lent progresses, we remember this journey toward death.

He knew. And yet Jesus went. Why? Why do some people go forward in the face of almost certain death to do what they know they are called to do? Romero too knew that he might encounter death for what he stood for. He had watched friends and fellow priests die for taking a stand on the side of the poor of El Salvador. Jesus has watched the death of his cousin, John the Baptist, for his message. Why this level of commitment? What is important enough to die for?

Romero might give us a few clues. He preached constantly about God’s preferential option for the poor. He says this; “We are a product of a spiritualized, individualistic education. We were taught: try to save your souls and don’t worry about the rest. We told the suffering: be patient, heaven will follow, hang on! No, that is not right! That is not the salvation Christ brought. The salvation Christ brings is a salvation from every bondage that oppresses human beings.”

I was deeply inspired by the EDS dean Katherine Ragsdale’s vision statement earlier this year. She observed; "few, if any, institutions have grappled adequately with the complex and threatening problems of classism in our churches and our society." This, I believe is our new challenge.

For Romero, his commitment to the most marginalized was very concrete and very real. He didn’t just talk about it. He lived it and ultimately died for it. So did Jesus.
Most of us in seminary are in a place of privilege. Like Romero, we are well educated and well read. We could choose a pretty comfortable life, though I would guess most of us are not planning to do that. But, whatever our backgrounds, we are graduate students, one of 9% of Americans who have that privilege. Romero has something to say to us. “When we say ‘for the poor’ we do not take sides with one social class. What we do… is invite all social classes, rich and poor without distinction, saying to everyone: Let us take seriously the cause of the poor as though it were our own—indeed, as what is really is, the cause of Jesus Christ.” We are invited to take up the cause of Jesus for the poorest among us.

We do not live in the El Salvador of the 80s and most of us will probably never face death for what we believe or teach. But we do live in one of the richest nations on earth that has a dark underside of poverty, of homelessness, of exploited labor, and of an abusive prison system. During morning and evening prayer here at chapel during Lent, we have been exploring this reality. Who are the crucified people of our own cities and towns and countryside? Every one of us walks past members of the homeless community every day. On the border earlier this year, I met more crucified people, people who were forced to flee their homes to survive, who are abused and hated and even die trying to enter our country. These were, these are Christ among us, crying out in pain among us. Our prisons are full of young and desperate people, and a large percentage of communities of color, revealing the dark underside of both racism and classism in our society.

In all this suffering and death, is there any hope? Romero said; “If I die, I will be resurrected in the Salvadoran people.” When I was on the border, I saw so much suffering that it was hard to see hope. Yet, I found it in a mural painted on the side of a priest’s office in Altar, a place of so much hardship for migrants as they begin their journey across the desert. In this mural, bones and the death are strewn across the desert and people are staggering along toward the horizon. Yet, above the horizon is an image of the Virgen de Guadalupe, the patroness of Mexico and the revelation God’s love to them. She holds her hands in prayer for her people and beckons them toward hope and resurrection. As we face a monumental task of solidarity with the poor among us, as we as an institution face the task of calling the church to become the church of the poor, we hold to the hope of resurrection, of the realization of the kin-dom of God among us.

I leave you with these words from Oscar Romero;
“God’s reign is already present on our earth in mystery. When the Lord comes it will be brought to perfection.” That is the hope that inspires Christians. We know that every effort to better society, especially when injustice and sin are so ingrained, is an effort that God blesses, that God wants, that God demands of us.

Only moments after he spoke those words, reportedly as he raised the cup during Eucharist, Oscar Romero was shot through the heart at the altar.

Class and Immigration

The one thing we don't usually want to talk about in the U.S. is class. Class seems fluid and tricky. For some, the term is too Marxist. For others, it just makes them uncomfortable. But we still use terms like "middle class" and "working class" or "working people" all the time. We all know, especially those of us from the working class, that there is indeed a class system in the United States.

Even though I am now in seminary, and in an academic world, I still identify strongly with my working class roots. My dad works in a warehouse and my mom runs a dog kennel on their farm. I grew up there, learning the value of hard work and working-class values. We never went hungry, but we never had a lot of money either. We lived in a mobile home and my dad built a barn to house our goats and chickens and we all dug a garden to grow our vegetables. My sisters and I are the first in our family to receive a university education, thanks to scholarships.

As I have been more and more involved in immigrant communities, as an ESL teacher, as an activist, and as an advocate, I have seen people who are working hard to make ends meet for their families. Immigrant workers are often exploited in the workplace, receive low wages, and struggle to survive and feed their kids. I've seen the same in the majority white, rural, working communities I grew up in.

That's why, when I attended a meeting hosted by the MA state governor's office last week in Framingham about Secure Communities, my heart dropped to see so many working class white people show up with their support. Secure Communities is opposed by the immigrant community because it creates a partnership between ICE (the branch of Homeland Security responsible for arresting and deporting undocumented immigrants) and local police. Many white people from the local area showed up with signs that were particularly offensive to the immigrant community ("I love gringos" "Go home, Illegals!").

Working class people have been told over and over that their own woes should be blamed on immigrants who are stealing their jobs. In this way, people who should be natural allies are pitted against each other.

I wanted to say; "Look, we are all in this together!" The reality is that the government policies that drive so many people to immigrate to the U.S. are the same policies that are hurting working class people in the U.S. For example, NAFTA allowed large corporations to import their products without tariffs into countries like Mexico. This drove corn prices down so low that millions of subsistence farmers in southern Mexico have been forced to migrate or starve. It is no coincidence that 1994 marked both a massive increase in border crossing and the implementation of NAFTA. At the same time, large corporations also have consolidated their landholdings, forcing U.S. farmers out of business and into poverty. Factories and industries in the U.S. that have employed most working people have been closed, because trade policies allow corporations to move offshore to make a better profit. Workers, both white and immigrant, are facing a massive economic squeeze for the same reason. Yet we are fighting each other!

If only we could recognize this and work together!