The Righteous Gentiles of World War II

The Righteous Gentiles of World War II, July 16

“Lord of the Exodus, who delivers your people with a strong hand and a mighty arm: Strengthen your Church with the examples of the righteous Gentiles of World War II to defy oppression for the rescue of the innocent; through Jesus Christ.”—Collect of the day: The Righteous Gentiles, July 16, in Holy Women, Holy Men, Celebrating the Saints (Church Publishing, 2019).

Lutz in bombed garden of the British Legation

Holy Women, Holy Men was a trial expanded calendar of commemorations of saints authorized by the 2009 General Convention of the Episcopal Church, that includes many modern people of faith and apostolic action. It was revised to become A Great Cloud of Witnesses (2016). The people remembered on July 16 are the thousands of Christians and people of faith who saved Jews from the Holocaust. One of them was Carl Lutz, an Evangelical Christian Swiss Vice-Counsel in Budapest. Lutz negotiated with the Nazis for the deportation of over 60,000 Jews to Palestine, probably saving more lives than any other person.

Lutz had gained permission to issue emigration papers for 8,000 Jews to Palestine. He interpreted it as applicable for 8,000 families, saving thousands more. A 2014 American film, Walking with the Enemy, tells of Lutz’s work with Pinchas Rosenbaum in Budapest during the German occupation of Hungary. Lutz also established seventy-six safe houses to hide Jews in Budapest, including the now famous Glass House, all of which the diplomat declared as Swiss territory.

There is another documentary about Lutz called The Forgotten Hero. I honestly believe each of us is given many moments to make a difference in the lives of others. The challenges may not be as dangerous or risky as Lutz’s on the international scene, but in our own environment, they may still demand courage. It is important to see how creative people who came before us made changes and found loopholes in systems awful beyond words when there seemed to be no way out. I can only believe this was the work of the Holy Spirit in the worst of times. I know that the same Holy Spirit is working in us today.

[See Carl Lutz, International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation, www.raoulwallenberg.net.]

Joanna. https://www.joannaseibert.com/

How is Your Heart?

“How is your heart?”

“In many Muslim cultures, when you want to ask others how they’re doing, you ask in Arabic, ‘How is your haal?’ In reality, we ask, ‘How is your heart doing at this very moment, at this breath?’ Tell me you’re more than just a machine checking off items from your to-do list. Put your hand on my arm, look me in the eye, and connect with me for one second. Tell me something about your heart, and awaken my heart.”—Omid Safi in On Being with Krista Tippett (9/16/2017).

Omid Safi, Director of Duke University Islamic Studies Center, once wrote a Thursday column for On Being. He is teaching us to be more intentional about relationships, rather than simply making lists and completing tasks and assignments. For example, my usual greeting to start a conversation is, “How are you doing?” The word doing implies that I am interested in what you are doing, while I actually want to know how you are being—how we can stay connected in this relationship and learn to live together as humans being rather than humans doing.

Maybe at some point, I can say, “How is your heart?” For that sharing is what will make the most difference in allowing us to be in relationship. Being implies that we live in the present moment, and it is in the present moment that we connect. My experience is making eye contact establishes us in the present. If I can hold your hand, we are making physical contact in the present moment.

Can we also transfer this understanding to our relationship with God? Instead of starting our prayers with our to-do list for God and expecting God to give us a to-do list as well, can we open prayers with “God, how is your heart? Show me your heart and open up my heart to you.”

Joanna. https://www.joannaseibert.com/

 

 

Tangier Island and the Church

Tangier Island

“‘The margins, Nathan,’ he said when he started speaking again. ‘That’s what we’re losing. We’re losing the churches on the margins. We aren’t doing enough for them.’”—Loren Mead to Nathan Kirkpatrick at faithandleadership.com.

Tangier Island

Tangier Island is a disappearing island in the Chesapeake Bay, twelve miles equidistant off both the Maryland and Virginia coast, losing up to sixteen feet of its coastline a year, secondary to the rising sea level from global warming and soil erosion. The government believes the island will be uninhabitable to the over 500 people living there in twenty to thirty years. In fifty years, the island will be completely underwater. The local islanders speak what is described as a unique Elizabethan British-like dialect combined with a southern drawl. They are primarily fishers of oyster and crab year-round, and tourist guides in the summer. The 1.2 square mile island is steeped in religious tradition and actually completely shuts down on Sunday morning.

Nathan Kirkpatrick, writing recently in the Duke Divinity School Leadership Education Center Alban Weekly (6/26/2018), recalls the above conversation with the founding director of the Alban Institute, Loren Mead, who compared the Church to Tangier Island. What does Dr. Mead mean by saying the Church is “losing its margins?” Is he telling us the Church is shrinking because it is not paying attention to people on the fringes or margins of society—the poor, the weak, the hungry, the homeless, the tired, the sick, those who are the most different from ourselves? In the larger scheme, is he referring to our neighbors who border us that we are not caring about? 

I remember one of my favorite quotes from Bishop Barbara Harris: “The Church is like an oriental rug. Its fringes are what make it most beautiful.” In spiritual direction, I ask people how the story of Tangier Island might relate to the care of their soul. There are so many possible answers.

Another question is, “Do you ever feel your soul shrinking? Do you feel you are losing the margins, the borders, the uniqueness, the most inspiring and possibly the most interesting parts of your soul, the God, the Christ within you?”