"She's completely a woman, . . . A man's woman if you like … what most women would like to be.
~~Bay Bucahanan on Sarah Palin, in "Sister, Sister" on Newsweek on line, October 11, 2008.
Help--anyone know what that means?!? Didn't women start the feminist movement so that they no longer has to be "a man's woman" . . .or did I just miss a century of social development?
How did Buchanan become crazy enough to say such a thing? Is she beside herself? Is she hysterical or something? Maybe she just needs a good man--or woman--to show her that she no longer needs to be "a man's woman".
sigh, in disbelief, walk away . . oh sister!
October 11, 2008
September 23, 2008
Really It Just Jumped Out At Me!
(Disclaimer: Rather then emailing the following to a handful of my professors and telling them that I will hold them accountable for inclusion, I am simply posting this here.)
I finally get it! I finally understand why Claremont School of Theology does not include the disability perspective in the program and none of the classes require Nancy Eiesland's The Disabled God: Toward A Liberatory Theology of Disability as required reading . . .they can't . . .it might cause rebellion:) They really don't want us to read this:
"People with disabilities are subject to prejudicial attitudes and discriminatory acts by the able-bodied majority, who consider people with disabilities inferior and use environmental segregation by way of built architectural barriers, as means of keeping a social and physical distance. A prime example is colleges and universities that ostensibly admit academically qualified people with disabilities yet do not provide specialized facilities or necessary services, thus making matriculation for these students exceptionally difficult. Simply ignoring the special needs of people with disabilities constitutes discrimination."
(Nancy Eiesland, from the book "The Disabled God", page 63)
Oops! I wonder if they know there are copies of the book in the library and the bookstore . . . So much for breadth and depth of theological knowledge, much less a commitment to social action and justice!
I finally get it! I finally understand why Claremont School of Theology does not include the disability perspective in the program and none of the classes require Nancy Eiesland's The Disabled God: Toward A Liberatory Theology of Disability as required reading . . .they can't . . .it might cause rebellion:) They really don't want us to read this:
"People with disabilities are subject to prejudicial attitudes and discriminatory acts by the able-bodied majority, who consider people with disabilities inferior and use environmental segregation by way of built architectural barriers, as means of keeping a social and physical distance. A prime example is colleges and universities that ostensibly admit academically qualified people with disabilities yet do not provide specialized facilities or necessary services, thus making matriculation for these students exceptionally difficult. Simply ignoring the special needs of people with disabilities constitutes discrimination."
(Nancy Eiesland, from the book "The Disabled God", page 63)
Oops! I wonder if they know there are copies of the book in the library and the bookstore . . . So much for breadth and depth of theological knowledge, much less a commitment to social action and justice!
September 22, 2008
Just a Thought About Economic Plans
I am all for Barak, and all for Main Street rather then Wall Street However, I don't think that homeowners facing foreclosure are completely "innocent"--they made bad financial decisions and they should have some consequences. (They are only innocent in that they were allowed to have for a while what they cannot afford; but all any of us have is only given to us temporarily.) I don't think homelessness is what foreclosed homeowners deserve, but neither may be staying in homes they cannot afford. Things change--it happens--roll with it. I have not bought a home, or ever foresee doing so, because I know I can not afford it. I have been evicted, once, and I have lived in my car--you do survive. I don't think individuals should be bailed out for bad decisions any more then Wall Street should--unless it serves a purpose of bettering the whole community, and in some cases keeping people in their homes may do that. We have to learn to accept that we can not all have everything we want. There is enough wealth in this nation for all to have what they need-which may not be the same as want. Let us all be reasonable. If we must have a bailout it should be for families and not banks--Main Street not Wall Street. Ussery is immoral--scripture has told us this for several thousand years--if we continue to base our economy on lending and charging interest, then of course we are headed for disaster! Duh!
What we really need is an interest moratorium!
What we really need is an interest moratorium!
September 20, 2008
Passing By
I was struck this morning by this quote:
As Jesus Passed By: Most of the really important things, which Jesus said or did, seemed to happen casually, "as he passed by." He dispensed health and scattered happiness naturally and gracefully as he journeyed through life. It was literally true, "He went about doing good."
The Urantia Book, Page 1875 (171:7.9) http://www.truthbook.com/index.cfm?linkID=1423#U171_7_9
Consider that--how the doing of good and the comforting of others can be done simply doing what seems human as we journey through our days. That is the simplicity of soul!
As Jesus Passed By: Most of the really important things, which Jesus said or did, seemed to happen casually, "as he passed by." He dispensed health and scattered happiness naturally and gracefully as he journeyed through life. It was literally true, "He went about doing good."
The Urantia Book, Page 1875 (171:7.9) http://www.truthbook.com/index.cfm?linkID=1423#U171_7_9
Consider that--how the doing of good and the comforting of others can be done simply doing what seems human as we journey through our days. That is the simplicity of soul!
September 19, 2008
Contemplative Practice #1-3
I am taking a class on spiritual growth this semester. I love it!! We are practicing a prayer technique devised by my professors, who after having studied many prayer practice found that multiple prayer practices pretty much came down to a few steps--so we are learning these. I thought this would be a good place, not to reveal my prayers, but to note the practice. Therefore I'll post more as the semester goes on but for now as far as we have gotten in three weeks is:
1) Pay attention to your breathing. What is the silence like? What is the feeling there in the silence of your own breath? Sit with it.
2) Breathe. What is in the silence? How does what comes up feel in your body, and where do you feel it?
3) Breathe. What do you feel in the silence? Sit with it. Will it show itself to you? What does it look like?
Prayer is vital to our spiritual lives, vital to becoming our authentic selves, but prayer is not always as easy as it seems, nor as easy as we think it should be. Prayer is "the real work" of our lives and sometimes it is quite hard. But we must sit with it. We must be. and allow ourselves to be as we really are.
1) Pay attention to your breathing. What is the silence like? What is the feeling there in the silence of your own breath? Sit with it.
2) Breathe. What is in the silence? How does what comes up feel in your body, and where do you feel it?
3) Breathe. What do you feel in the silence? Sit with it. Will it show itself to you? What does it look like?
Prayer is vital to our spiritual lives, vital to becoming our authentic selves, but prayer is not always as easy as it seems, nor as easy as we think it should be. Prayer is "the real work" of our lives and sometimes it is quite hard. But we must sit with it. We must be. and allow ourselves to be as we really are.
August 18, 2008
Liberation Theology for American People: Lesson #1--Economic Solidarity
This video highlights the importance of solidarity. Solidarity is not just being informed but experientially understanding or having empathy for others and from that perspective working for justice and freedom.
August 06, 2008
A Sad Anniversary
It has just come to my attention that today is the 63rd Anniversary of the USA dropping a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima Japan.
Let the day be silent.
Read the book "An Outbreak of Peace" if you can find it.
Let there be a folding of 1,000 paper cranes.
Honor those who non-violently seek to end the nuclear age of warfare.
Let us seek our own disarmerment.
Let the day be silent.
Read the book "An Outbreak of Peace" if you can find it.
Let there be a folding of 1,000 paper cranes.
Honor those who non-violently seek to end the nuclear age of warfare.
Let us seek our own disarmerment.
August 03, 2008
God is in the Garden, and so is Chaos
So I usually don't do this, but on this occasion I thought that should alert readers to my husband's latest blog. I have remarked before at how, of late, I have been finding God in my garden. It seems I am not the only one to think so. . .read Ed's blog to find out more http://tapkae.com/blog/2008/08/03/how-does-your-garden-grow/
(or just click on the title of this post.)
Cheers,
(or just click on the title of this post.)
Cheers,
July 26, 2008
Keep on Walking, Keep on Talking, Marching on to Freedom Land: Theology and Three year olds!
The first part of the title of this blog come from a song the kids learned at Vacation Bible School last week. This year I agreed to help with the Vacation Bible School at Mission Hills United Church of Christ. When the Christian Education Director called me to talk about what I would be doing she asked me what ages I wanted to teach, I had just returned from a conference on “Loving Service” and I asked her what she really needed me to do. What she really needed was someone to co-teach the three year olds! Ok, I said after a deep breath. I was a little worried about the energy of three year olds and what might happen to my back if I had to pick them up—but none of this turned out to a problem.
I spent Vacation Bible School playing with the three year olds and having a great time. At first I was slightly frustrated because the lessons of the day were hard to convey to such a young age group. But I soon learned that what these kids needed was time to explore being in a school setting with other kids and building friendships—all of them will be starting preschool in the Fall—so we focused on that. On Monday, our three three-year olds tended to play by themselves checking out the crafts and exploring the playroom. By Friday they were sitting together doing puzzles, wondering what the others were doing, singing songs, enjoying books from the church library together, and not to mention crying when mom came to take them home rather then when she dropped them off. They learned a lot at VBS—they learned friendship, solidarity, and some new independence!
The theme of this year’s VBS was social justice and civil rights leaders. Each day we had a Bible story from Pastor Scott about leaders in the Bible; and each day the lessons, songs, and crafts centered around the work of a particular civil rights/social justice leader. The three year olds did not always sit through the Bible story, it was a bit too long right after music class. Nevertheless, the other teacher and I tried to tell the Bible stories while the kids did their crafts. The day persistent prayer was the theme; we were making prayer boxes with the kids. In explaining prayer and constant prayer as being with God the other teacher and I resorted to asking the three year olds what made them happy in order to show them different ways they could pray while doing everyday things. I learned that for these three year olds: God was the ocean, God was that which made swimming possible, and God was play dough! God as fluid and pliable not too far off from what we learn in seminary. . . And more than fair enough for theology at three!
The theological explorations of Vacation Bible School were fun! So fun in fact that I was really too tired each night to read about the person we were to present the next day, but I found that most of people we were to present to the kids were people I had studied in my “Voices of Non-Violence” course last semester. Brief explanations that three year-olds could take in were not a problem. We read a book about Martin Luther King Jr. We talked a little about Ruby Bridges and Gandhi. On Wednesday, I waited with the CE director and one of the girls from my group until her mom could pick her up a little bit late. I sent her over to the book table to pick out a book to read. She brought me a small paperback about Nelson Mandela, and we read it twice. The next day she brought me the same book to read her, I told her we’d already read it and sent her to get another book, but she brought it back again. On the last day, as the kids painted vegetables on canvas shopping bags, I told them about Caesar Chavez and the farmer workers movement and we sang, “Keep on Walking . . .” and “This land is your land”. I had had a great time with the three year olds but I was not sure how much of the civil rights message they had picked up. That is when this same small girl went for the Nelson Mandela book AGAIN . . . this time I asked her:
“Do know who that is”, pointing to the cover,
“No”,
“That’s Nelson Mandela”,
“They put him in jail?”,
“Yes, do you know why?”,
“Because he’s trouble maker.”
And then I got it! Not only had the three year olds learned theology, they had learned ethics! The significance of this hit me as I drove home from VBS on Friday and heard the celebratory wishes South African kids had recorded for Nelson Mandela’s 90th birthday--yes, this happened on his birthday! Social justice is learned at all ages and taught from old to young and young to old. In response to hearing this tale, my husband asked if this was really a three year old; and then he teased me about “trying to train my replacement”, or turning young ones into myself, something my pastor has also teased me about doing when I teach Sunday school. If you inadvertently teach social justice just by being you when you teach the gospel, well . . . I can’t think of a better gift to give in honor of the gospel or Nelson Mandela’s birthday! Can you?
I spent Vacation Bible School playing with the three year olds and having a great time. At first I was slightly frustrated because the lessons of the day were hard to convey to such a young age group. But I soon learned that what these kids needed was time to explore being in a school setting with other kids and building friendships—all of them will be starting preschool in the Fall—so we focused on that. On Monday, our three three-year olds tended to play by themselves checking out the crafts and exploring the playroom. By Friday they were sitting together doing puzzles, wondering what the others were doing, singing songs, enjoying books from the church library together, and not to mention crying when mom came to take them home rather then when she dropped them off. They learned a lot at VBS—they learned friendship, solidarity, and some new independence!
The theme of this year’s VBS was social justice and civil rights leaders. Each day we had a Bible story from Pastor Scott about leaders in the Bible; and each day the lessons, songs, and crafts centered around the work of a particular civil rights/social justice leader. The three year olds did not always sit through the Bible story, it was a bit too long right after music class. Nevertheless, the other teacher and I tried to tell the Bible stories while the kids did their crafts. The day persistent prayer was the theme; we were making prayer boxes with the kids. In explaining prayer and constant prayer as being with God the other teacher and I resorted to asking the three year olds what made them happy in order to show them different ways they could pray while doing everyday things. I learned that for these three year olds: God was the ocean, God was that which made swimming possible, and God was play dough! God as fluid and pliable not too far off from what we learn in seminary. . . And more than fair enough for theology at three!
The theological explorations of Vacation Bible School were fun! So fun in fact that I was really too tired each night to read about the person we were to present the next day, but I found that most of people we were to present to the kids were people I had studied in my “Voices of Non-Violence” course last semester. Brief explanations that three year-olds could take in were not a problem. We read a book about Martin Luther King Jr. We talked a little about Ruby Bridges and Gandhi. On Wednesday, I waited with the CE director and one of the girls from my group until her mom could pick her up a little bit late. I sent her over to the book table to pick out a book to read. She brought me a small paperback about Nelson Mandela, and we read it twice. The next day she brought me the same book to read her, I told her we’d already read it and sent her to get another book, but she brought it back again. On the last day, as the kids painted vegetables on canvas shopping bags, I told them about Caesar Chavez and the farmer workers movement and we sang, “Keep on Walking . . .” and “This land is your land”. I had had a great time with the three year olds but I was not sure how much of the civil rights message they had picked up. That is when this same small girl went for the Nelson Mandela book AGAIN . . . this time I asked her:
“Do know who that is”, pointing to the cover,
“No”,
“That’s Nelson Mandela”,
“They put him in jail?”,
“Yes, do you know why?”,
“Because he’s trouble maker.”
And then I got it! Not only had the three year olds learned theology, they had learned ethics! The significance of this hit me as I drove home from VBS on Friday and heard the celebratory wishes South African kids had recorded for Nelson Mandela’s 90th birthday--yes, this happened on his birthday! Social justice is learned at all ages and taught from old to young and young to old. In response to hearing this tale, my husband asked if this was really a three year old; and then he teased me about “trying to train my replacement”, or turning young ones into myself, something my pastor has also teased me about doing when I teach Sunday school. If you inadvertently teach social justice just by being you when you teach the gospel, well . . . I can’t think of a better gift to give in honor of the gospel or Nelson Mandela’s birthday! Can you?
July 18, 2008
Send Rove to Jail,
This says it all, and its about time! Don't forget to sign the petition at SendRovetoJail.com !
July 11, 2008
The American Government Refuses to Support The Rights of People with Disabilities
I bet you have not heard this story on your TV broadcasts or in the local newspaper. The media doesn't often seem to pay attention to people with disability, and since we are the largest minority in the nation, I wonder why that is? But this is serious, really.
In May of this year, the United Nations passed a resolution asking nations to pledge to improve the rights it grantees to its citizens' with disabilities. In the case of nations, like the US, where rights for people with disabilities do exist, the resolution asks that the government pledge not to reverse and seek to protect the rights of its own citizens. THIS IS THE FIRST MAJOR HUMAN RIGHTS RESOLUTION PUT FORWARD BY THE UN IN YEARS!! The American government under the G.W. Bush Administration has refused to sign it. It is true here is a link to a news article: http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/04/04/news/UN-GEN-UN-Disabled-Rights.php
When the resolution was first passed in May I read an article in which an administration official, I believe from the State Department, was quoted as saying that Americans with disabilities had enough rights already--I wish I could find that article now but it has come down off the Web it seems. HMPH . . . Americans don't need it? Is that why the US just passed an revision to the ADA? Is that why 42% of all housing discrimination complaints in the US (to HUD) come from people denied housing and civil rights because of disability? (Thank You Cindy for that fact.)
The UN even went through the trouble of explaining this new resolution to the world using the medium of a children's book specially designed for the purpose. You'd think even America's current administration could comprehend a children's book. But oh wait, that's right . . . weren't they the ones reading "My Pet Goat" while holding the book upside down? Oh Well what can we do? How soon is the election? But seriously this is no joke, its not even funny.
In the meantime, here is what UNICEF had to say about the new UN Resolution on the Right of People with Disability. So don't take my word for it, check it out yourself.
Come November, Please go out and vote for those who will support the rights of people with disabilities and those who will uphold the human rights of all people!
In May of this year, the United Nations passed a resolution asking nations to pledge to improve the rights it grantees to its citizens' with disabilities. In the case of nations, like the US, where rights for people with disabilities do exist, the resolution asks that the government pledge not to reverse and seek to protect the rights of its own citizens. THIS IS THE FIRST MAJOR HUMAN RIGHTS RESOLUTION PUT FORWARD BY THE UN IN YEARS!! The American government under the G.W. Bush Administration has refused to sign it. It is true here is a link to a news article: http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/04/04/news/UN-GEN-UN-Disabled-Rights.php
When the resolution was first passed in May I read an article in which an administration official, I believe from the State Department, was quoted as saying that Americans with disabilities had enough rights already--I wish I could find that article now but it has come down off the Web it seems. HMPH . . . Americans don't need it? Is that why the US just passed an revision to the ADA? Is that why 42% of all housing discrimination complaints in the US (to HUD) come from people denied housing and civil rights because of disability? (Thank You Cindy for that fact.)
The UN even went through the trouble of explaining this new resolution to the world using the medium of a children's book specially designed for the purpose. You'd think even America's current administration could comprehend a children's book. But oh wait, that's right . . . weren't they the ones reading "My Pet Goat" while holding the book upside down? Oh Well what can we do? How soon is the election? But seriously this is no joke, its not even funny.
In the meantime, here is what UNICEF had to say about the new UN Resolution on the Right of People with Disability. So don't take my word for it, check it out yourself.
Come November, Please go out and vote for those who will support the rights of people with disabilities and those who will uphold the human rights of all people!
June 21, 2008
Everywhere; of God, Garden, and Women
I think I have come to the conclusion that God is there when we least expect it. It seems that God is everywhere, potentially acting through any, and all, things.
Of late, I have come to find God in my vegetable garden, and have even sensed the divine patternings in the weeds—as I mowed them down—in the back yard. Yet, God is the Creator of even those pesky life forms that make us sneeze, those that compete with us for nourishment in the garden. What I cannot figure out is if the Creator loves all living things, then have I offended the Divine by mowing down the created weeds that pass for our lawn? Seriously, it is a dilemma I have pondered as I seek not only to integrate knowledge about, but also to better understand and love God, our creative Deity who is both transcendent and immanent, Creator and yet known through human interpretations of a Divinity we cannot grasp yet we seek to experience. How can I hold such a belief and not be a panentheist, why do I resist the notion of labeling myself so? (The Eastern Orthodox pan-enthism expressing the notion that God indwells all things—according to Wikipedia—is closer to my own thought) How can I explain a God so meet in the garden? Perhaps like Mary I cannot, or least cannot without out others thinking me crazy; perhaps like her I have been tarrying in the garden searching for God because I too feel lost and bit bereft. Or does this send me all the way back to Eve who walked with God in the garden, who upon hearing God proclaim all things good set about to experience all the fruit of the garden for herself and share them with those she loved. Eve though did not get to stay in the garden, neither did Mary. It seems that although they left the garden, when they seemed most alone, God was with them even working through them having giving them specific tasks to do upon leaving the garden. Perhaps there is something here for more reflection. Perhaps I am just waiting for clarification. In the meantime, although they maybe part of the beloved creation, perhaps even with some role to play beyond my knowledge, I cannot think of the weeds as good. I’ll continue to remove them from the veggie patch, but perhaps I’ll just keep an eye on them and watch them grow in lawn, and wait in case they have something to reveal. And I’ll keep alternating thoughts between Mary and Eve wondering and wandering through the garden, both of them thinking they are alone and both of them walking with God when they least expect it.
Of late, I have come to find God in my vegetable garden, and have even sensed the divine patternings in the weeds—as I mowed them down—in the back yard. Yet, God is the Creator of even those pesky life forms that make us sneeze, those that compete with us for nourishment in the garden. What I cannot figure out is if the Creator loves all living things, then have I offended the Divine by mowing down the created weeds that pass for our lawn? Seriously, it is a dilemma I have pondered as I seek not only to integrate knowledge about, but also to better understand and love God, our creative Deity who is both transcendent and immanent, Creator and yet known through human interpretations of a Divinity we cannot grasp yet we seek to experience. How can I hold such a belief and not be a panentheist, why do I resist the notion of labeling myself so? (The Eastern Orthodox pan-enthism expressing the notion that God indwells all things—according to Wikipedia—is closer to my own thought) How can I explain a God so meet in the garden? Perhaps like Mary I cannot, or least cannot without out others thinking me crazy; perhaps like her I have been tarrying in the garden searching for God because I too feel lost and bit bereft. Or does this send me all the way back to Eve who walked with God in the garden, who upon hearing God proclaim all things good set about to experience all the fruit of the garden for herself and share them with those she loved. Eve though did not get to stay in the garden, neither did Mary. It seems that although they left the garden, when they seemed most alone, God was with them even working through them having giving them specific tasks to do upon leaving the garden. Perhaps there is something here for more reflection. Perhaps I am just waiting for clarification. In the meantime, although they maybe part of the beloved creation, perhaps even with some role to play beyond my knowledge, I cannot think of the weeds as good. I’ll continue to remove them from the veggie patch, but perhaps I’ll just keep an eye on them and watch them grow in lawn, and wait in case they have something to reveal. And I’ll keep alternating thoughts between Mary and Eve wondering and wandering through the garden, both of them thinking they are alone and both of them walking with God when they least expect it.
June 07, 2008
Utah Phillips 1935-2008
I was greatly saddened last week to learn about the passing of Utah Phillips one of the great folk artists and pacifists of our time. I learned about Utah Phillips several years ago through his recordings with Ani Difranco. He quickly became not just one of my favorite artists but an inspirational figure whose work I turned to revive me when the world just seemed too much, too doomed by its own stupidity. His stories and music were more then just stories and songs, they spoke to us of greater human ideals and our potentialities as human beings. Utah also kept alive the songs and stories of the labor movement, a history sorely neglected that we forget at our own peril. Last fall wrote a paper on the theology implied by the combination of music and lyrics in Utah and Ani's rendition of "Korea", its not just about history and pacifism but the human experience and our need to live for something greater than ourselves--I call this God, but I also, and I think Utah would agree, call it human community. In the spring I took an ethics course called Voices of Non-Violence, Utah was certainly one of these. Utah was perhaps one of the best story tellers and activists of the last century. The silence that comes with his passing is hard to imagine into the future, but his words will abide and endure with us still.
Here is one video of Utah Phillips telling story and singing about non-violence and theology, I hope you enjoy. There are many more videos of Utah on Youtube:
Utah Phillip's son maintains a blog that may also be of interest; for more information about Utah Phillip's please visit utahphillips.blogspot.com/
Here is one video of Utah Phillips telling story and singing about non-violence and theology, I hope you enjoy. There are many more videos of Utah on Youtube:
Utah Phillip's son maintains a blog that may also be of interest; for more information about Utah Phillip's please visit utahphillips.blogspot.com/
June 06, 2008
All and Together: My Sermon
My dear friend Joe posted a sermon on his blog, good idea, so I thought I'd follow in his example. The is the sermon I preached in the Chapel at CST on April 10, 2008. My friend Jeri told me it was a "magnus opus"! I don't know about that but what I do know is that the Sprit MOVED in the chapel that day! I know I was caught up in it.
All and Together Kelli Parrish Lucas
Acts 2: 42-47
Kresge Chapel / Claremont School of Theology
April 10, 2008
Over spring break, I was asked to help with an activity for a mentoring program for a program matches youth with disabilities and professionals with disabilities to explore ways to navigate our not - always - so – accessible – society. I went.
When I arrived, a lawyer with cerebral palsy was giving a presentation, he was speaking about the rights people with disabilities have to access public spaces and institutions under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
It was a scene that moved me--not because there was a man doing an ordinary thing with incredible effort—but because I know what a diagnosis of CP means it means a world in which people too often say “you can’t”, “you’ll never”, “you shouldn’t”or worse “let me” without any considerations of your own desires, and absolutely no concept of your personal determination.
After the program ended, I approached this lawyer to thank him for his presentation and to pose a few questions. I had introduced myself but had not quite finished my question, when he interrupted me asking: “You’re not, studying to become a minister are you?” When I nodded my head and said, “Well, yes, actually I am”. He rolled his eyes, let out a sigh, and set about answering my question.
To an outsider of the disability community, this may seem strange; but it is not.
Given the context, I knew his was not a response to my vocation as much as it was a concern for my sanity. Far from questioning my call, as a person with disabilities, to ministry, his response was one of pity for me having such a call, in the first place.
You see, as an educated person and disability activist, he was aware of something about religious communities, something religious communities are often oblivious to; something that religious communities don’t like to talk about, even when they are aware of it. As a lawyer, he knew the loophole that exempts churches from ADA compliance. (It is an open dirty secret, that far too many churches take advantage of.) He also knew / that as a result of this, Churches are often less accessible to persons with disabilities than the rest of society is!
This paradox of exclusion within the Church brings me to the Acts of the Apostles.
As we know, the book of Acts recounts the growth of the churches throughout the Roman Empire. Chapter two of Acts begins with the coming of the Holy Spirit, and the gathering of the first converts to Christianity at Pentecost. It is a scene full of diversity, as it recounts the nations and languages of all present. We can almost imagine the variety of shades, shapes and sounds of the people present. The section of this chapter we look at this week gives us insight into how the early Christians lived together as a diverse community.
Acts 2:42-47 reads:
They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, and to the breaking of the bread and the prayers. Awe came upon every one, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all as any had need. Day by day as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.
This devotion to teaching, fellowship, praying, and going home to break bread sounds, almost as if it could have been written about our lives here at CST. Many of us have brought the proceeds from our lives, or hopes thereof, to be here. Like the first converts, we have brought all we have and devoted ourselves to the work of the gospel and the church as it is in this community. We, too, are in this together—ALL of us.
But who were these people of the early church? Were they really like us? Our text does not tell us about the individuals in the early church. We know who they are only through the larger context Acts 2: 5-12, tell us that these people were not only from Jerusalem and the Mediterranean areas of the Empire but they were from Africa, Asia, and Arabia--“every nation under heaven” (5) they were of all hues and spoke all languages
At the end of our text, we hear that “day by day the Lord added to their number.” It as if the text wants us to remember that it is not our task to call people into the Church—for God does that—rather our task is to be ready to be hospitable to those who come to our communities.
But whom does God send to the Church?
Our text tells us that the church was filling up with “those who were being saved”.
Now, we know that throughout the ancient world, and in some of churches today, it was believed that one of the signs of sin was thought to be physical or mental disability. We also know, from the gospels, that an aspect of Jesus’ ministry was healing. In Mark 5:19 Jesus told the man released from a legion of mental illness to “go home” and “tell” what God had done. In Luke 17:14 Jesus sends ten lepers to the priests so they could be welcomed and integrated back into community. Time and time again, Jesus freed people from the social stigmas of disability which excluded them from society.
The early church was full of such people. God called them.
So how can we, as the modern Church be as radically welcoming as Jesus? How can we be hospitable?
One of the things that we can do is to watch our language.
Shortly after I was born, I was diagnosed with mild cerebral palsy. Most people do not know this you see, when I was a baby and started doing baby things that weren’t expected the nurses at the hospital nicknamed me “the miracle baby”—and much to my dismay, it has stuck. This is often what I hear in response to my story—and why I stopped telling it.
I invite you to think about this theologically—I don’t want to take miracles away from anybody, but what does it mean to call a person a miracle? Do we really want to imply that people with disabilities who do ordinary things are any more miraculous in their existence than anyone else? Do we really, theologically, want to perpetuate stigma?
In Truth, I am not any more of a “miracle” than anyone else here today.
Everybody has to find their particular way of being in the world, but we often make this more difficult by defining how people with disabilities are in the world by using language that speaks more of physical conditions than spiritual realities. We can avoid this by speaking of individual persons rather than disabled bodies. We can say “disabled” rather than that old “H” word, (handicapped). We can remove the terms “retarded” and “normal” from our vocabularies. We must speak of doing things “with” people with disabilities rather than “to” or “for” them. There many ways we can disable stigma by the language we choose. The church has the responsibility to seek out the fullness of such language --and to speak it as well--as it is spoken by people with disabilities.
We all know persons with disabilities who are members and leaders of the church. Some have “hidden disabilities” or illnesses that we may not see. We may not know about their disability --unless they tell us. And this, too, is a tender thing. For people within the disability community know that not only are our churches not as accessible as they could be, but that even within the church the social stigmas attached to disabilities—the true disabling of people—Remains.
So, how do we respond? And is it any wonder that people with hidden disabilities remain silent?
That people feel compelled to hide themselves, even within the Church is disturbing, but it is not surprising. In 2000, a study by the National Organization on Disability revealed that “[s]lightly less than half (45%) of people with disabilities say they never go to a place of worship compared to [only] 35% of people without disabilities.” This, in and of itself is a commentary on our churches and the Church as whole. What it might mean that the Christian community, which once grew by reversing the social affects of disability now reaches less than half of persons with disability? Perhaps it is a hint or even an expectation, for the church to grow with the evangelistic message of inclusion. But it also indicates that the Church needs to confront the pains it has caused by excluding and, sometimes, mistreating people with disabilities whom God has sent to abide with the Church.
As, I read our text as a person with disabilities, I am mindful of . . .the lawyer who shrugged the Church off as hopelessly inaccessible, the millions of people with disabilities who have been told that they have not been healed because they lack faith, and of the people with disabilities who have been told that they cannot minister because the Church cannot see what God is doing with them and persists in questioning whom God calls.
And I wonder, what Moses, what Paul, what woman possessed by seven demons have we dismissed?
Then, I pray, that through the Holy Spirit we may not be the same, but that we may be open to all and together as we are.
All and Together Kelli Parrish Lucas
Acts 2: 42-47
Kresge Chapel / Claremont School of Theology
April 10, 2008
Over spring break, I was asked to help with an activity for a mentoring program for a program matches youth with disabilities and professionals with disabilities to explore ways to navigate our not - always - so – accessible – society. I went.
When I arrived, a lawyer with cerebral palsy was giving a presentation, he was speaking about the rights people with disabilities have to access public spaces and institutions under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
It was a scene that moved me--not because there was a man doing an ordinary thing with incredible effort—but because I know what a diagnosis of CP means it means a world in which people too often say “you can’t”, “you’ll never”, “you shouldn’t”or worse “let me” without any considerations of your own desires, and absolutely no concept of your personal determination.
After the program ended, I approached this lawyer to thank him for his presentation and to pose a few questions. I had introduced myself but had not quite finished my question, when he interrupted me asking: “You’re not, studying to become a minister are you?” When I nodded my head and said, “Well, yes, actually I am”. He rolled his eyes, let out a sigh, and set about answering my question.
To an outsider of the disability community, this may seem strange; but it is not.
Given the context, I knew his was not a response to my vocation as much as it was a concern for my sanity. Far from questioning my call, as a person with disabilities, to ministry, his response was one of pity for me having such a call, in the first place.
You see, as an educated person and disability activist, he was aware of something about religious communities, something religious communities are often oblivious to; something that religious communities don’t like to talk about, even when they are aware of it. As a lawyer, he knew the loophole that exempts churches from ADA compliance. (It is an open dirty secret, that far too many churches take advantage of.) He also knew / that as a result of this, Churches are often less accessible to persons with disabilities than the rest of society is!
This paradox of exclusion within the Church brings me to the Acts of the Apostles.
As we know, the book of Acts recounts the growth of the churches throughout the Roman Empire. Chapter two of Acts begins with the coming of the Holy Spirit, and the gathering of the first converts to Christianity at Pentecost. It is a scene full of diversity, as it recounts the nations and languages of all present. We can almost imagine the variety of shades, shapes and sounds of the people present. The section of this chapter we look at this week gives us insight into how the early Christians lived together as a diverse community.
Acts 2:42-47 reads:
They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, and to the breaking of the bread and the prayers. Awe came upon every one, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all as any had need. Day by day as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.
This devotion to teaching, fellowship, praying, and going home to break bread sounds, almost as if it could have been written about our lives here at CST. Many of us have brought the proceeds from our lives, or hopes thereof, to be here. Like the first converts, we have brought all we have and devoted ourselves to the work of the gospel and the church as it is in this community. We, too, are in this together—ALL of us.
But who were these people of the early church? Were they really like us? Our text does not tell us about the individuals in the early church. We know who they are only through the larger context Acts 2: 5-12, tell us that these people were not only from Jerusalem and the Mediterranean areas of the Empire but they were from Africa, Asia, and Arabia--“every nation under heaven” (5) they were of all hues and spoke all languages
At the end of our text, we hear that “day by day the Lord added to their number.” It as if the text wants us to remember that it is not our task to call people into the Church—for God does that—rather our task is to be ready to be hospitable to those who come to our communities.
But whom does God send to the Church?
Our text tells us that the church was filling up with “those who were being saved”.
Now, we know that throughout the ancient world, and in some of churches today, it was believed that one of the signs of sin was thought to be physical or mental disability. We also know, from the gospels, that an aspect of Jesus’ ministry was healing. In Mark 5:19 Jesus told the man released from a legion of mental illness to “go home” and “tell” what God had done. In Luke 17:14 Jesus sends ten lepers to the priests so they could be welcomed and integrated back into community. Time and time again, Jesus freed people from the social stigmas of disability which excluded them from society.
The early church was full of such people. God called them.
So how can we, as the modern Church be as radically welcoming as Jesus? How can we be hospitable?
One of the things that we can do is to watch our language.
Shortly after I was born, I was diagnosed with mild cerebral palsy. Most people do not know this you see, when I was a baby and started doing baby things that weren’t expected the nurses at the hospital nicknamed me “the miracle baby”—and much to my dismay, it has stuck. This is often what I hear in response to my story—and why I stopped telling it.
I invite you to think about this theologically—I don’t want to take miracles away from anybody, but what does it mean to call a person a miracle? Do we really want to imply that people with disabilities who do ordinary things are any more miraculous in their existence than anyone else? Do we really, theologically, want to perpetuate stigma?
In Truth, I am not any more of a “miracle” than anyone else here today.
Everybody has to find their particular way of being in the world, but we often make this more difficult by defining how people with disabilities are in the world by using language that speaks more of physical conditions than spiritual realities. We can avoid this by speaking of individual persons rather than disabled bodies. We can say “disabled” rather than that old “H” word, (handicapped). We can remove the terms “retarded” and “normal” from our vocabularies. We must speak of doing things “with” people with disabilities rather than “to” or “for” them. There many ways we can disable stigma by the language we choose. The church has the responsibility to seek out the fullness of such language --and to speak it as well--as it is spoken by people with disabilities.
We all know persons with disabilities who are members and leaders of the church. Some have “hidden disabilities” or illnesses that we may not see. We may not know about their disability --unless they tell us. And this, too, is a tender thing. For people within the disability community know that not only are our churches not as accessible as they could be, but that even within the church the social stigmas attached to disabilities—the true disabling of people—Remains.
So, how do we respond? And is it any wonder that people with hidden disabilities remain silent?
That people feel compelled to hide themselves, even within the Church is disturbing, but it is not surprising. In 2000, a study by the National Organization on Disability revealed that “[s]lightly less than half (45%) of people with disabilities say they never go to a place of worship compared to [only] 35% of people without disabilities.” This, in and of itself is a commentary on our churches and the Church as whole. What it might mean that the Christian community, which once grew by reversing the social affects of disability now reaches less than half of persons with disability? Perhaps it is a hint or even an expectation, for the church to grow with the evangelistic message of inclusion. But it also indicates that the Church needs to confront the pains it has caused by excluding and, sometimes, mistreating people with disabilities whom God has sent to abide with the Church.
As, I read our text as a person with disabilities, I am mindful of . . .the lawyer who shrugged the Church off as hopelessly inaccessible, the millions of people with disabilities who have been told that they have not been healed because they lack faith, and of the people with disabilities who have been told that they cannot minister because the Church cannot see what God is doing with them and persists in questioning whom God calls.
And I wonder, what Moses, what Paul, what woman possessed by seven demons have we dismissed?
Then, I pray, that through the Holy Spirit we may not be the same, but that we may be open to all and together as we are.
May 08, 2008
Mother Antonia: a Life of Non-Violence
This semester one of my assignments was to write a paper about a person who is a voice of non-violence. I almost immediately thought of Mother Antonia. Her story is one that has inspired and sustained me though seminary. So I wrote about her for the class. Karen posted her paper on Peter, Paul, and Mary on her blog and I thought it was such a good idea that I would follow suit. Blogger has deleted my footnotes, but the Bibliography is at the end. Enjoy!
Non-Violence as a Way of Life
One of the things that has struck me in our study of the “voices of non-violence” is how non-violence is not only a method of social change, but a way of life for many of those who seek to make the world a more hospitable place for people and the realization of justice. This is something that I think can be said for many of the individual “voices of non-violence” we have studied this semester. Non-violence as way of life is particularly something that we encountered as we studied the work and lives of Leo Tolstoy, Gandhi, Andre Trocme, Dorothy Day, and Cesar Chavez. When we read Dorothy Day, however, something within me went back to a woman I had met a few years earlier. I believe it was in the summer of 2005, that I saw a sign announcing an event at a bookstore in San Diego. What captured my attention was the headline: “The Prison Angel: Mother Antonia’s Journey from Beverly Hills to a Life in a Mexican Jail.” Intrigued by the notion of prison ministry, the headline piqued my interest. I had to go. As it turns out the headline was also the tile of a book, The Prison Angel: Mother Antonia’s Journey from Beverly Hills to a Life in a Mexican Jail, by Pulitzer Prize winning journalists Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan. This journalism couple had heard of “an Irish nun . . . who lived in a cell alongside the inmates, helping to feed and clothe them and protect them from abuse by guards” while working on a series of stories about the Mexican prison system for the Washington Post. They were soon to come to know the work of a woman known as Mother Antonia. As I was to learn at the book signing in 2005, Mother Antonia is anything but your ordinary nun! Mother Antonia was present at this book signing. What I heard that day, from this small, seemly fragile, woman who was such a powerful agent of change and peace, simply awed me. I did not even have words to speak with her. Her simple presence is almost indescribable; it simply transforms you to be in the same room as her. Later that summer, I confessed to my pastor that, while I probably should have been reading theology in preparation seminary, I simply could not resist reading Mother Antonia’s story. His response to me was “that is theology.” Indeed. It is theology of highest kind. In this paper, I will present some biographical information about Mother Antonia—including her religious journey and struggles—and seek to show how her work in Mexican prisons has established of a ministry with and for the poor there, as well as enabled her to become a “voice of nonviolence” in one of the most dangerous places in places in North America. I will conclude by considering what may come of Mother Antonia’s ministries in the future.
Mother Antonia has become a powerful presence for quelling the violence and suffering that is all too much a part of life in La Mesa prison in Tijuana, Mexico. The presence of Mother Antonia makes all the difference in such a place. As told in the book about her life, on Halloween night in 1994, on the eve of the Mexican cultural holiday Dias de la Murtes, a riot broke out in the “punishment cells” of La Mesa Prison. Mother Antonia was out at the time, but hurried back to the prison only to find that the guards were getting ready to storm the prison and she would have to get special permission from the warden, who was out of town, to enter—she got her permission. Jordan and Sullivan describe what happened next this way:
She shuffles her feet carefully along the prison's cement floor, her outstretched hands feeling the way along the walls. Finding the stairway leading up, she realizes she is not alone in the blackness. The men [prisoners] have stayed with her. She doesn't know if there are five or fifty, but she feels them and hears them all around her like a human shield. She is the closest thing to heaven most of them have ever seen, this woman who brings them pillows and pure white bandages, who keeps the guards from beating them, who never stops hugging them and telling them they are loved. They call her Mother. And they are going to take a bullet rather than have La Madre die tonight.
She can feel the heavy black metal doors of cells as she passes them. The screams and shooting are close now, the smoke is sharp in her eyes and lungs. She calls out to the men in the punishment cells.
They are shocked to hear her.
"Don't shoot! Mother's here!" they yell.
"Mother Antonia! Get out of here. You'll be killed!" one inmate shouts. "Please, go. You'll be shot!"
She doesn't stop. She moves forward toward their voices.
"What's going on here? The whole city is terrified," she says. "Your mothers and girlfriends and children are outside crying. Please stop. There's an army out there getting ready to come in."
She tells them that if they don't put down their weapons, more children will be orphaned, including their own. Think of your parents crying at another family funeral, she pleads. Her voice is warm, convincing, and urgent, and it suddenly changes the ugly night.
The metal door to the punishment cell block opens. She can now see a bit by the light of burning mattresses. Her white clothes are singed with ash. An inmate she knows as Blackie steps forward from the shadows.
"Mother..."
She pushes her way inside like a running back.
"C'mon, C'mon. Give me the guns. Give me the guns right now. I'm not going to let you get hurt. I'm not going to let them hurt you and punish you. Give me the guns."
"Mother," Blackie says. "We've been up here so long they've forgotten us. The water's gone, and we're desperate."
Mother Antonia falls to her knees in the smoky hallway. She is right in front of Blackie, looking up at him with her hands held out, palms up, pleading with him.
"It's not right that you're locked up here, hungry and thirsty. We can take care of those things, but this isn't the way to do it. I will help you make it better. But first, you have to give me the guns. I beg you to put down your weapons."
"Mother," Blackie says softly, looking down at her. "As soon as we heard your voice, we dropped the guns out the window.
This episode clearly shows Mother’s Antonia’s commitment to fostering non-violence in the prison where she lives and does much of her work. It is a commitment for which she is willing to risk her life. Hers is a work that focuses on building relationships with people, and focusing the attention of others on the respect and dignity due individual human beings. It was the strength of the relationships Mother Antonia had fostered that convinced the warden to allow her to reenter the prison during a riot and caused the prisoners to give up their weapons at the sound of her voice urging non-violence. She is known for providing care and concern to both the prisoners and the guards at the prison as stance that makes her well respected by all sides in an environment that can become a war zone. But, where did Mother Antonia learn these skills? Where did she learn the ideals of liberation that declare having solidarity with a community is not the same as visiting with charitable aid? Where did she learn such a feminist theology and ethic that told her that individual relationships could be the basis for fundamental change?
A lifetime of observing the realties of poverty, and living a Catholic faith that emphasized charitable works had been Mother Antonia’s training. The events of her life show that from an early age Mother Antonia’s life was one that would be devoted to service, and eventually to the Catholic Motherhood. Mother Antonia was born Mary Clarke in 1926 in Los Angeles, California. Although her mother would die from the complications of pregnancy in 1929, her father Joseph Clarke, an Irish American familiar with poverty, would see the family through the Great Depression and become a model of charity to inspire Mary’s life and work. Joseph became a supply salesman; both defense contractors and the Hollywood movie industry would rely on him for their carbon paper needs through World War Two and beyond. By 1942, Joseph moved his children and second wife to a “lavish house on Towers Road in Beverly Hills”; their new neighbors were celebrities and he would later buy a large second home in Laguna Beach. Despite his growing fortunes, however, Joseph taught his children that it was important to patronize street vendors who struggled to make ends meet, and to give money to charity. He also took the young Mary to see the working conditions of coal miners in Pennsylvania, where he “warned her never to cross a picket line and always take the side of workers demanding fair wages and decent conditions.” His association with Jewish friends also exposed Mary at a young age to the human sufferings generated by the Holocaust; Joseph, as did his friends, sent money overseas to help at least one Jewish man escape Europe and later assisted him in finding a job in America.
The young Mary learned these lessons from her father well. It is said that his involvement in resisting the Nazis moved Mary such that she “developed a deep empathy for the Jews and respect for their faith that she would later incorporate into her mission.” The young Mary may have modeled her personality of helpfulness on her father, but she was also bold. Although she was only fifteen, she “talked recruiters into letting her join the women’s Ambulance Corps, an auxiliary force created to help military and civilian doctors in case of an attack.” It was during her affiliation with this group that Mary would begin to be known for collecting items for charitable causes.
In 1946, when she was nineteen, Mary would marry Ray Monahan who had served with her brother in the war. The youthful Mary wanted more than anything to be a mother, yet their first son, Joseph, died just three days after a difficult delivery. The loss of Joseph had a profound impact on Mary’s religious life. It caused her to question the Catholic teaching that unbaptized babies were relegated to Limbo. She also found refuge for her grief at St. Anne’s Melkite Catholic Church, of the Eastern Rite rather than the Latin Rite Church; a subsequent desire to have her second child baptized at the Eastern Rite church would cause Mary some minor conflict with the Latin Rite, but ultimately “she felt sure that God approved of all good works and prayer, whether they came from a church, a mosque, or a synagogue.” By 1949, Mary and Ray had two other children; however, financial and martial stress led Mary to realize she no longer loved Ray, so she took the kids and left. The couple would soon divorce.
At age twenty-four Mary found herself a single working mother, “work[ing] part-time for her father’s company and part-time in a real estate office he owned in Bel-Air” all the while “try[ing] to be home by five to spend time with the kids.” She soon met Carl Brenner and as soon as her divorce to Ray was finalized, Mary and Carl went to Las Vegas to be married. Mary and Carl would have five children, yet their marriage would become an emotionally distant one. As the couple spent more time apart, however, Mary continued her charity work. She insists that she was not “running away from Carl. . . . [But rather that] other people needed me. Charity is not a thing you do, its love, it’s who you become.” She raised money for hospitals, collected medical supplies to send abroad, organized charity auctions, and more. Mary would follow her father’s example by teaching her children to care for the poor, attend to individual’s needs, and work for charity.
Mary’s commitment to the Church and her charity work, lead her to cross paths with Monsignor Anthony Brouwers who would listen to her many questions and concerns about the Catholic faith. Monsignor Brouwers served as her spiritual guide and the two became confidantes. Brouwers also assured Mary that her works were evidence of her fidelity to the gospel, a message that was crucial for Mary, a divorced Catholic, to receive. Brouwers died in 1964. Mary, however, was just beginning to discover her “call to ministry.”
Another priest came into Mary’s life, who would forever change her work and her life. In 1965, Mary received a phone call from “Father Henry Vetter, a priest from Pasadena who did missionary work in Mexico”; she soon accompanied him to Tijuana where he introduced her to the La Mesa penitentiary. This place tapped into Mary’s concern for the poor. Not longer after, Mary “started coming over the border with truckloads of supplies, including mattresses the US Navy base in San Diego discarded by the hundreds.” Mary’s gift for collecting items for charities and the poor, had become a natural part of her life by this time, but now it would form the beginning of a trajectory toward full time ministry.
Carl moved out of the family home, and he and Mary divorced in 1972. Mary “wondered if she might be able to pursue her missionary dream as a Catholic sister. . . . [B]ut they did not accept anyone older than thirty-five.” Mary again, struggled with the rules and confines of her Catholic faith. Having been a regular visitor to the La Mesa prison for over ten years, at that point “on Easter Sunday 1976. . .. [s]he had made her choice; she was going to wear a habit—even if that had to be without the church’s official sanction.” Mary donned a simple dress and self made veil on March 19, 1977; she had become Mother Antonia—a name she took in honor of her old friend Monsignor Anthony Brouwers. Then, “Father Vetter . . . encouraged her to go to Our Lady of the Assumption church in Ventura, where she used to go to Mass every morning, and make personal vows.. . . Those vows did not have the weight of the church behind them but Mary figured that if she and god had an understanding, nothing else really mattered.” Mother Antonia’s youngest son, sixteen years old at the time, still lived at home and she made the hard decision to let her son slowly move in with his father; “[i]n March 1978, after a year of spending more and more nights in La Mesa, [she] sold her place in San Diego and moved into the prison for good.”
Although Mother Antonia had moved into the prison to be with the prisoners and provide them with comfort she knew that this also meant working for them outside the prison as well. The gift of collecting things for charity that she had developed as Mary Clarke would only accelerate in her work as Mother Antonia. Father Joe Carroll, who is well-known for his creation of Father Joe’s Villages to serve the poor in San Diego, was still just beginning to build his ministry in the mid-seventies. Nonetheless, Mother Antonia would soon come to him in order to gather supplies for her prisoners. Father Joe has said “once you look in her eyes, that’s it ‘No’ disappears from your vocabulary real quick”, and as a compliment he adds, “She’s a thief! The best thief I’ve ever seen! A con woman, a hustler! She’ll never stop picking your pocket.. . . I ‘m the hustler priest, But she out hustles me every time.” Mother Antonia’s reputation for doing anything to help the prisoners in La Mesa has endowed her with a unique power, one that has been known to enable her to simply wave trucks filled with supplies for her prisoners through border crossings.
Mother Antonia may have dawned the habit and taken up a ministry to the poor and imprisoned in Mexico without the Church’s blessing, but that does not mean that such a blessing was unimportant to her. One of Mother Antonia’s friends, a priest by the name of Father Jamie Rasura persuaded her to ask the church to formally bless her work. So she arranged to meet with Bishop Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo of Tijuana. As Jordan and Sullivan report:
They sat together and talked for an hour, and she told him her life story, about her two marriages that ended in divorce, her children, everything. Posadas said that he admired her work, and that, of course, he would give her his official blessing. He also asked her to take the white habit of the Mercedarians, an eight hundred year old order of priests who had a special devotion to prisoners, and he said he wanted to put the habit on her himself.
On September 24, 1978, the date that marks “the feast of Our Lady of Mercy, which commemorates that founding of the Mercedarian order”, Bishop Posadas said a mass at the La Mesa prison and put the official habit on Mother Antonia. Mother Antonia was not only a self-proclaimed but, now, a church sanctioned nun.
As a nun, Mother Antonia continued her work in the prison. One aspect of the Mexican prison system that Mother Antonia has been passionate about changing is the police brutality and other practices that strip prisoners of their human dignity in the Mexican prison system. There is a practice called the Grito at La Mesa in which the inmates are forced to stand and state their names and the crimes for which they are being held for, whether or not they have been convicted. Because this practice equated prisoner’s identity with their crime rather than humanity, and because this practice was known for fostering the violent system and the brutal occurrences for which La Mesa is known, Mother Antonia sought to abolish it. It was not until Mother Antonia had been in the prison for four years that she was permitted to be present at this event. However, she did not wait those four years to address the need for the guards to treat the prisoners as human beings. It is said that she would ask the guards to try “to put themselves in the prisoners shoes”. Mother Antonia became known for handing out personal hygiene items to the prisoners in front of the guards so that they would have to face the other’s humanity. Once she was allowed to attend the Grito, she did so every morning for over ten years, all the while seeking to end this practice; the Grito was abolished in 2003.
This small older woman is so bold in her attempts to convince individual guards to stop using brutality that she has been known to tell them, “Don’t forget, that is Christ you have in your hands. . . and he is a federale, too.” Her efforts have paid off. Prison guard Pablo Lamegos Mendez has said that “[t]he guards don’t touch the prisoners anymore. Nowadays I don’t see guards hitting prisoners, even when she is not there.” Mother Antonia has not been content to preach non-violence and human dignity in the prison but has “brought her message of nonviolence to police stations.” She even wrote a “Prayer for Police” which reads “Help me to remember that there is no justice without mercy. Give me compassion that I may have compassion for those who need it”—this prayer now “hangs in police stations all over Baja California”. Mother Antonia found herself placed in a system in which police “routinely extracted confessions and information by beating and torture”, and sought to change it. Knowing that people were working on the outside to address human rights in the Mexican prisons, she thought she would do what she could to address these issues from the inside.
Mother Antonia’s work to improve the conditions of Mexican prisons and to improve the lives of prisoners has allowed her to see the connection between poverty and incarceration. Mother Antonia’s work with the poor is also bound up with her work with prisoners in Mexican jails. Many people in the Mexican prison system are imprisoned because of small offenses for which they can not pay the fine. Mother Antonia has been known to the pay the fines of the poor so that they can gain their freedom, all the while also working to address sentencing inequities with judges in charge of the judicial system .
The scope of Mother Antonia’s work is so far reaching that it is almost incomprehensible to think that one woman could have done what she has. In addition to what has already been mentioned, Mother Antonia’s work in the prison has included: working to get amnesty for prisoners, bringing in plastic surgeons to fix disfigurements, bringing in dentists to improve the smiles of prisoners, and helping drug traffickers realize the devastating effects of their trade, and even change. Mother Antonia’s work has not been confined to the prison, outside the prison she has established “a shelter for AIDS patients” and conducts a monthly mass for the unknown and unclaimed dead of Tijuana .
In 1991 the Bishops of San Diego and Tijuana, urged Mother Antonia to encourage others to serve, as she has. Mother Antonia began work on a proposal, and in 1997 the Tijuana diocese gave consent for her to found a religious community; Bishop Rafael Romo Munzo formally accepted the order in 2003. The religious order founded by Mother Antonia is known as the Eudist Servants of the Eleventh Hour. This order was designed to create a venue for older women, ages forty-five to sixty-five years old to minister to the poor. The Eudists, like their foundress, are an unusual order. The order does not participate in communal living nor do they share a common purse, each woman maintains her own home and financial life. It is said that Mother Antonia “prefers to have those who join her keep their bank accounts and provide as much as they can for their own expenses”. Mother Antonia has said that hers “is an order where you don’t burn your bridges behind you, . . .. We want people to keep their things and money in case they have to go back to their family.” The women of the Eudist Order, take vows for only one year at a time, but can renew their vows annually. Some members of the order commute from San Diego daily to assist Mother Antonia with her work in Tijuana, while others do similar types of ministry in other parts of the United States. Of their collective ministry, the Eudist Order states on their website that:
The Servants operate a ministry center, Casa Campos de San Miguel, located just three blocks from the La Mesa penitentiary. The Casa is a refuge for women leaving prison and for women visiting incarcerated family in the nearby prison, and also for women and children who have come to Tijuana for treatment for cancer. The sisters also have a convent nearby, Corazon de Maria, which serves as the community headquarters and is also a residence for some of the sisters in Tijuana. Corazon de Maria is also used as the community’s house of formation.
Their ministry of mission to the poor and imprisoned keeps the unusual Order of women busy.
Mother Antonia’s amazing life of service to the poor is not simply her work, or her life, it is who she is. Mother Antonia’s commitment to the poor has called her not just to collect the necessities that the poor need for their daily lives, but it has enabled her to confront the larger systematic issues that create the social problems she seeks to address. Her work in the prison has allowed her to confront the indignities that poverty, brutality, corruption, and injustice create. She has stared them in the face, told them they are wrong, and invited them to change. In her persistence of over thirty years, Mother Antonia has indeed seen and caused things to change. Her ministry is hard to critique. When I think of her ministry I am mostly called to say “amen”. The most tempting critique is to ask what happens to the ministry Mother Antonia does when she dies? However, the establishment of the Eudist Servants of the Eleventh Hour Order is a good indication that Mother Antonia’s ministry at La Mesa prison will continue whether she is inside of it or not. The arrival in 2005 of a priest to both serve as a spiritual director of the Order and to work on the foundation of a half-way house for men released from La Mesa Penitentiary is a good sign that somehow this ministry may also continue beyond Mother Antonia’s life.
In this paper, I have provided a brief biographical sketch about Mother Antonia. I have highlighted her religious journey and few of her religious struggles. I have sought to show how her interaction with both prisoners and guards in the Mexican prison system has made her a unique voice of non-violence that speaks from inside the system rather than from without. Her approach to non-violence is one that focuses on the human dignity of each individual. I have tried to capture how her efforts to seek the release of people imprisoned simply because they cannot pay a fine, is a powerful ministry of liberation for people trapped in one of the most dangerous prisons in North America. Finally, we have looked at how Mother Antonia’s work to create a religious order may sustain her ministry into the future. Mother Antonia is a powerful woman. A powerful part of her ministry is to tend to each individual’s needs. Often enough there is an item or a word that people need from her, but occasionally there is a grave need for confession and repentance which Mother Antonia does not shy away from. Her care for the poor inspires a great hope. However, Mother Antonia is a figure who does not make it so easy for us. Her example makes clear that it is not enough to be glad that there is someone, like her, doing such work. Ultimately, I find that Mother Antonia’s ministry is one example that serves to ask me: will you do it? Will you risk your life to bring peace to the forgotten, the poor, the violent, and imprisoned? I find I have not an answer to give. I often wonder if I could forgive the drug dealers, rapists, and murders the way that Mother Antonia does. I find that, yes; it is something I think would be good to do, even if I am yet unsure how. As I reflect on the example of Mother Antonia, I find it difficult to imagine how she so thoroughly embodies non-violence that she has become it—even to the extent that she no longer seems to fear violence. I wonder if that is something I will ever learn. And it occurs to me that her degree of theological attainment is one I may never achieve!
Bibliography
“Eudist Servants of the Eleventh Hour.” [on-line] available from www.eudistservants.org/community.html., accessed May 8, 2008.
“LA Priest Joins Mother Antonia’s Prison Ministry in Tijuana.” Tidings. [on-line] available at http://www.the-tidings.com/2006/1201/tjpriest.htm, accessed May 8, 2008.
Jordan, Mary and Kevin Sullivan. The Prison Angel: Mother Antonia’s Journey from Beverly Hills to a Life of Service in a Mexican Jail. New York: Penguin Press, 2005.
----. [In person] Book Signing Event at Barnes and Noble in San Diego, Summer of 2005.
Non-Violence as a Way of Life
One of the things that has struck me in our study of the “voices of non-violence” is how non-violence is not only a method of social change, but a way of life for many of those who seek to make the world a more hospitable place for people and the realization of justice. This is something that I think can be said for many of the individual “voices of non-violence” we have studied this semester. Non-violence as way of life is particularly something that we encountered as we studied the work and lives of Leo Tolstoy, Gandhi, Andre Trocme, Dorothy Day, and Cesar Chavez. When we read Dorothy Day, however, something within me went back to a woman I had met a few years earlier. I believe it was in the summer of 2005, that I saw a sign announcing an event at a bookstore in San Diego. What captured my attention was the headline: “The Prison Angel: Mother Antonia’s Journey from Beverly Hills to a Life in a Mexican Jail.” Intrigued by the notion of prison ministry, the headline piqued my interest. I had to go. As it turns out the headline was also the tile of a book, The Prison Angel: Mother Antonia’s Journey from Beverly Hills to a Life in a Mexican Jail, by Pulitzer Prize winning journalists Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan. This journalism couple had heard of “an Irish nun . . . who lived in a cell alongside the inmates, helping to feed and clothe them and protect them from abuse by guards” while working on a series of stories about the Mexican prison system for the Washington Post. They were soon to come to know the work of a woman known as Mother Antonia. As I was to learn at the book signing in 2005, Mother Antonia is anything but your ordinary nun! Mother Antonia was present at this book signing. What I heard that day, from this small, seemly fragile, woman who was such a powerful agent of change and peace, simply awed me. I did not even have words to speak with her. Her simple presence is almost indescribable; it simply transforms you to be in the same room as her. Later that summer, I confessed to my pastor that, while I probably should have been reading theology in preparation seminary, I simply could not resist reading Mother Antonia’s story. His response to me was “that is theology.” Indeed. It is theology of highest kind. In this paper, I will present some biographical information about Mother Antonia—including her religious journey and struggles—and seek to show how her work in Mexican prisons has established of a ministry with and for the poor there, as well as enabled her to become a “voice of nonviolence” in one of the most dangerous places in places in North America. I will conclude by considering what may come of Mother Antonia’s ministries in the future.
Mother Antonia has become a powerful presence for quelling the violence and suffering that is all too much a part of life in La Mesa prison in Tijuana, Mexico. The presence of Mother Antonia makes all the difference in such a place. As told in the book about her life, on Halloween night in 1994, on the eve of the Mexican cultural holiday Dias de la Murtes, a riot broke out in the “punishment cells” of La Mesa Prison. Mother Antonia was out at the time, but hurried back to the prison only to find that the guards were getting ready to storm the prison and she would have to get special permission from the warden, who was out of town, to enter—she got her permission. Jordan and Sullivan describe what happened next this way:
She shuffles her feet carefully along the prison's cement floor, her outstretched hands feeling the way along the walls. Finding the stairway leading up, she realizes she is not alone in the blackness. The men [prisoners] have stayed with her. She doesn't know if there are five or fifty, but she feels them and hears them all around her like a human shield. She is the closest thing to heaven most of them have ever seen, this woman who brings them pillows and pure white bandages, who keeps the guards from beating them, who never stops hugging them and telling them they are loved. They call her Mother. And they are going to take a bullet rather than have La Madre die tonight.
She can feel the heavy black metal doors of cells as she passes them. The screams and shooting are close now, the smoke is sharp in her eyes and lungs. She calls out to the men in the punishment cells.
They are shocked to hear her.
"Don't shoot! Mother's here!" they yell.
"Mother Antonia! Get out of here. You'll be killed!" one inmate shouts. "Please, go. You'll be shot!"
She doesn't stop. She moves forward toward their voices.
"What's going on here? The whole city is terrified," she says. "Your mothers and girlfriends and children are outside crying. Please stop. There's an army out there getting ready to come in."
She tells them that if they don't put down their weapons, more children will be orphaned, including their own. Think of your parents crying at another family funeral, she pleads. Her voice is warm, convincing, and urgent, and it suddenly changes the ugly night.
The metal door to the punishment cell block opens. She can now see a bit by the light of burning mattresses. Her white clothes are singed with ash. An inmate she knows as Blackie steps forward from the shadows.
"Mother..."
She pushes her way inside like a running back.
"C'mon, C'mon. Give me the guns. Give me the guns right now. I'm not going to let you get hurt. I'm not going to let them hurt you and punish you. Give me the guns."
"Mother," Blackie says. "We've been up here so long they've forgotten us. The water's gone, and we're desperate."
Mother Antonia falls to her knees in the smoky hallway. She is right in front of Blackie, looking up at him with her hands held out, palms up, pleading with him.
"It's not right that you're locked up here, hungry and thirsty. We can take care of those things, but this isn't the way to do it. I will help you make it better. But first, you have to give me the guns. I beg you to put down your weapons."
"Mother," Blackie says softly, looking down at her. "As soon as we heard your voice, we dropped the guns out the window.
This episode clearly shows Mother’s Antonia’s commitment to fostering non-violence in the prison where she lives and does much of her work. It is a commitment for which she is willing to risk her life. Hers is a work that focuses on building relationships with people, and focusing the attention of others on the respect and dignity due individual human beings. It was the strength of the relationships Mother Antonia had fostered that convinced the warden to allow her to reenter the prison during a riot and caused the prisoners to give up their weapons at the sound of her voice urging non-violence. She is known for providing care and concern to both the prisoners and the guards at the prison as stance that makes her well respected by all sides in an environment that can become a war zone. But, where did Mother Antonia learn these skills? Where did she learn the ideals of liberation that declare having solidarity with a community is not the same as visiting with charitable aid? Where did she learn such a feminist theology and ethic that told her that individual relationships could be the basis for fundamental change?
A lifetime of observing the realties of poverty, and living a Catholic faith that emphasized charitable works had been Mother Antonia’s training. The events of her life show that from an early age Mother Antonia’s life was one that would be devoted to service, and eventually to the Catholic Motherhood. Mother Antonia was born Mary Clarke in 1926 in Los Angeles, California. Although her mother would die from the complications of pregnancy in 1929, her father Joseph Clarke, an Irish American familiar with poverty, would see the family through the Great Depression and become a model of charity to inspire Mary’s life and work. Joseph became a supply salesman; both defense contractors and the Hollywood movie industry would rely on him for their carbon paper needs through World War Two and beyond. By 1942, Joseph moved his children and second wife to a “lavish house on Towers Road in Beverly Hills”; their new neighbors were celebrities and he would later buy a large second home in Laguna Beach. Despite his growing fortunes, however, Joseph taught his children that it was important to patronize street vendors who struggled to make ends meet, and to give money to charity. He also took the young Mary to see the working conditions of coal miners in Pennsylvania, where he “warned her never to cross a picket line and always take the side of workers demanding fair wages and decent conditions.” His association with Jewish friends also exposed Mary at a young age to the human sufferings generated by the Holocaust; Joseph, as did his friends, sent money overseas to help at least one Jewish man escape Europe and later assisted him in finding a job in America.
The young Mary learned these lessons from her father well. It is said that his involvement in resisting the Nazis moved Mary such that she “developed a deep empathy for the Jews and respect for their faith that she would later incorporate into her mission.” The young Mary may have modeled her personality of helpfulness on her father, but she was also bold. Although she was only fifteen, she “talked recruiters into letting her join the women’s Ambulance Corps, an auxiliary force created to help military and civilian doctors in case of an attack.” It was during her affiliation with this group that Mary would begin to be known for collecting items for charitable causes.
In 1946, when she was nineteen, Mary would marry Ray Monahan who had served with her brother in the war. The youthful Mary wanted more than anything to be a mother, yet their first son, Joseph, died just three days after a difficult delivery. The loss of Joseph had a profound impact on Mary’s religious life. It caused her to question the Catholic teaching that unbaptized babies were relegated to Limbo. She also found refuge for her grief at St. Anne’s Melkite Catholic Church, of the Eastern Rite rather than the Latin Rite Church; a subsequent desire to have her second child baptized at the Eastern Rite church would cause Mary some minor conflict with the Latin Rite, but ultimately “she felt sure that God approved of all good works and prayer, whether they came from a church, a mosque, or a synagogue.” By 1949, Mary and Ray had two other children; however, financial and martial stress led Mary to realize she no longer loved Ray, so she took the kids and left. The couple would soon divorce.
At age twenty-four Mary found herself a single working mother, “work[ing] part-time for her father’s company and part-time in a real estate office he owned in Bel-Air” all the while “try[ing] to be home by five to spend time with the kids.” She soon met Carl Brenner and as soon as her divorce to Ray was finalized, Mary and Carl went to Las Vegas to be married. Mary and Carl would have five children, yet their marriage would become an emotionally distant one. As the couple spent more time apart, however, Mary continued her charity work. She insists that she was not “running away from Carl. . . . [But rather that] other people needed me. Charity is not a thing you do, its love, it’s who you become.” She raised money for hospitals, collected medical supplies to send abroad, organized charity auctions, and more. Mary would follow her father’s example by teaching her children to care for the poor, attend to individual’s needs, and work for charity.
Mary’s commitment to the Church and her charity work, lead her to cross paths with Monsignor Anthony Brouwers who would listen to her many questions and concerns about the Catholic faith. Monsignor Brouwers served as her spiritual guide and the two became confidantes. Brouwers also assured Mary that her works were evidence of her fidelity to the gospel, a message that was crucial for Mary, a divorced Catholic, to receive. Brouwers died in 1964. Mary, however, was just beginning to discover her “call to ministry.”
Another priest came into Mary’s life, who would forever change her work and her life. In 1965, Mary received a phone call from “Father Henry Vetter, a priest from Pasadena who did missionary work in Mexico”; she soon accompanied him to Tijuana where he introduced her to the La Mesa penitentiary. This place tapped into Mary’s concern for the poor. Not longer after, Mary “started coming over the border with truckloads of supplies, including mattresses the US Navy base in San Diego discarded by the hundreds.” Mary’s gift for collecting items for charities and the poor, had become a natural part of her life by this time, but now it would form the beginning of a trajectory toward full time ministry.
Carl moved out of the family home, and he and Mary divorced in 1972. Mary “wondered if she might be able to pursue her missionary dream as a Catholic sister. . . . [B]ut they did not accept anyone older than thirty-five.” Mary again, struggled with the rules and confines of her Catholic faith. Having been a regular visitor to the La Mesa prison for over ten years, at that point “on Easter Sunday 1976. . .. [s]he had made her choice; she was going to wear a habit—even if that had to be without the church’s official sanction.” Mary donned a simple dress and self made veil on March 19, 1977; she had become Mother Antonia—a name she took in honor of her old friend Monsignor Anthony Brouwers. Then, “Father Vetter . . . encouraged her to go to Our Lady of the Assumption church in Ventura, where she used to go to Mass every morning, and make personal vows.. . . Those vows did not have the weight of the church behind them but Mary figured that if she and god had an understanding, nothing else really mattered.” Mother Antonia’s youngest son, sixteen years old at the time, still lived at home and she made the hard decision to let her son slowly move in with his father; “[i]n March 1978, after a year of spending more and more nights in La Mesa, [she] sold her place in San Diego and moved into the prison for good.”
Although Mother Antonia had moved into the prison to be with the prisoners and provide them with comfort she knew that this also meant working for them outside the prison as well. The gift of collecting things for charity that she had developed as Mary Clarke would only accelerate in her work as Mother Antonia. Father Joe Carroll, who is well-known for his creation of Father Joe’s Villages to serve the poor in San Diego, was still just beginning to build his ministry in the mid-seventies. Nonetheless, Mother Antonia would soon come to him in order to gather supplies for her prisoners. Father Joe has said “once you look in her eyes, that’s it ‘No’ disappears from your vocabulary real quick”, and as a compliment he adds, “She’s a thief! The best thief I’ve ever seen! A con woman, a hustler! She’ll never stop picking your pocket.. . . I ‘m the hustler priest, But she out hustles me every time.” Mother Antonia’s reputation for doing anything to help the prisoners in La Mesa has endowed her with a unique power, one that has been known to enable her to simply wave trucks filled with supplies for her prisoners through border crossings.
Mother Antonia may have dawned the habit and taken up a ministry to the poor and imprisoned in Mexico without the Church’s blessing, but that does not mean that such a blessing was unimportant to her. One of Mother Antonia’s friends, a priest by the name of Father Jamie Rasura persuaded her to ask the church to formally bless her work. So she arranged to meet with Bishop Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo of Tijuana. As Jordan and Sullivan report:
They sat together and talked for an hour, and she told him her life story, about her two marriages that ended in divorce, her children, everything. Posadas said that he admired her work, and that, of course, he would give her his official blessing. He also asked her to take the white habit of the Mercedarians, an eight hundred year old order of priests who had a special devotion to prisoners, and he said he wanted to put the habit on her himself.
On September 24, 1978, the date that marks “the feast of Our Lady of Mercy, which commemorates that founding of the Mercedarian order”, Bishop Posadas said a mass at the La Mesa prison and put the official habit on Mother Antonia. Mother Antonia was not only a self-proclaimed but, now, a church sanctioned nun.
As a nun, Mother Antonia continued her work in the prison. One aspect of the Mexican prison system that Mother Antonia has been passionate about changing is the police brutality and other practices that strip prisoners of their human dignity in the Mexican prison system. There is a practice called the Grito at La Mesa in which the inmates are forced to stand and state their names and the crimes for which they are being held for, whether or not they have been convicted. Because this practice equated prisoner’s identity with their crime rather than humanity, and because this practice was known for fostering the violent system and the brutal occurrences for which La Mesa is known, Mother Antonia sought to abolish it. It was not until Mother Antonia had been in the prison for four years that she was permitted to be present at this event. However, she did not wait those four years to address the need for the guards to treat the prisoners as human beings. It is said that she would ask the guards to try “to put themselves in the prisoners shoes”. Mother Antonia became known for handing out personal hygiene items to the prisoners in front of the guards so that they would have to face the other’s humanity. Once she was allowed to attend the Grito, she did so every morning for over ten years, all the while seeking to end this practice; the Grito was abolished in 2003.
This small older woman is so bold in her attempts to convince individual guards to stop using brutality that she has been known to tell them, “Don’t forget, that is Christ you have in your hands. . . and he is a federale, too.” Her efforts have paid off. Prison guard Pablo Lamegos Mendez has said that “[t]he guards don’t touch the prisoners anymore. Nowadays I don’t see guards hitting prisoners, even when she is not there.” Mother Antonia has not been content to preach non-violence and human dignity in the prison but has “brought her message of nonviolence to police stations.” She even wrote a “Prayer for Police” which reads “Help me to remember that there is no justice without mercy. Give me compassion that I may have compassion for those who need it”—this prayer now “hangs in police stations all over Baja California”. Mother Antonia found herself placed in a system in which police “routinely extracted confessions and information by beating and torture”, and sought to change it. Knowing that people were working on the outside to address human rights in the Mexican prisons, she thought she would do what she could to address these issues from the inside.
Mother Antonia’s work to improve the conditions of Mexican prisons and to improve the lives of prisoners has allowed her to see the connection between poverty and incarceration. Mother Antonia’s work with the poor is also bound up with her work with prisoners in Mexican jails. Many people in the Mexican prison system are imprisoned because of small offenses for which they can not pay the fine. Mother Antonia has been known to the pay the fines of the poor so that they can gain their freedom, all the while also working to address sentencing inequities with judges in charge of the judicial system .
The scope of Mother Antonia’s work is so far reaching that it is almost incomprehensible to think that one woman could have done what she has. In addition to what has already been mentioned, Mother Antonia’s work in the prison has included: working to get amnesty for prisoners, bringing in plastic surgeons to fix disfigurements, bringing in dentists to improve the smiles of prisoners, and helping drug traffickers realize the devastating effects of their trade, and even change. Mother Antonia’s work has not been confined to the prison, outside the prison she has established “a shelter for AIDS patients” and conducts a monthly mass for the unknown and unclaimed dead of Tijuana .
In 1991 the Bishops of San Diego and Tijuana, urged Mother Antonia to encourage others to serve, as she has. Mother Antonia began work on a proposal, and in 1997 the Tijuana diocese gave consent for her to found a religious community; Bishop Rafael Romo Munzo formally accepted the order in 2003. The religious order founded by Mother Antonia is known as the Eudist Servants of the Eleventh Hour. This order was designed to create a venue for older women, ages forty-five to sixty-five years old to minister to the poor. The Eudists, like their foundress, are an unusual order. The order does not participate in communal living nor do they share a common purse, each woman maintains her own home and financial life. It is said that Mother Antonia “prefers to have those who join her keep their bank accounts and provide as much as they can for their own expenses”. Mother Antonia has said that hers “is an order where you don’t burn your bridges behind you, . . .. We want people to keep their things and money in case they have to go back to their family.” The women of the Eudist Order, take vows for only one year at a time, but can renew their vows annually. Some members of the order commute from San Diego daily to assist Mother Antonia with her work in Tijuana, while others do similar types of ministry in other parts of the United States. Of their collective ministry, the Eudist Order states on their website that:
The Servants operate a ministry center, Casa Campos de San Miguel, located just three blocks from the La Mesa penitentiary. The Casa is a refuge for women leaving prison and for women visiting incarcerated family in the nearby prison, and also for women and children who have come to Tijuana for treatment for cancer. The sisters also have a convent nearby, Corazon de Maria, which serves as the community headquarters and is also a residence for some of the sisters in Tijuana. Corazon de Maria is also used as the community’s house of formation.
Their ministry of mission to the poor and imprisoned keeps the unusual Order of women busy.
Mother Antonia’s amazing life of service to the poor is not simply her work, or her life, it is who she is. Mother Antonia’s commitment to the poor has called her not just to collect the necessities that the poor need for their daily lives, but it has enabled her to confront the larger systematic issues that create the social problems she seeks to address. Her work in the prison has allowed her to confront the indignities that poverty, brutality, corruption, and injustice create. She has stared them in the face, told them they are wrong, and invited them to change. In her persistence of over thirty years, Mother Antonia has indeed seen and caused things to change. Her ministry is hard to critique. When I think of her ministry I am mostly called to say “amen”. The most tempting critique is to ask what happens to the ministry Mother Antonia does when she dies? However, the establishment of the Eudist Servants of the Eleventh Hour Order is a good indication that Mother Antonia’s ministry at La Mesa prison will continue whether she is inside of it or not. The arrival in 2005 of a priest to both serve as a spiritual director of the Order and to work on the foundation of a half-way house for men released from La Mesa Penitentiary is a good sign that somehow this ministry may also continue beyond Mother Antonia’s life.
In this paper, I have provided a brief biographical sketch about Mother Antonia. I have highlighted her religious journey and few of her religious struggles. I have sought to show how her interaction with both prisoners and guards in the Mexican prison system has made her a unique voice of non-violence that speaks from inside the system rather than from without. Her approach to non-violence is one that focuses on the human dignity of each individual. I have tried to capture how her efforts to seek the release of people imprisoned simply because they cannot pay a fine, is a powerful ministry of liberation for people trapped in one of the most dangerous prisons in North America. Finally, we have looked at how Mother Antonia’s work to create a religious order may sustain her ministry into the future. Mother Antonia is a powerful woman. A powerful part of her ministry is to tend to each individual’s needs. Often enough there is an item or a word that people need from her, but occasionally there is a grave need for confession and repentance which Mother Antonia does not shy away from. Her care for the poor inspires a great hope. However, Mother Antonia is a figure who does not make it so easy for us. Her example makes clear that it is not enough to be glad that there is someone, like her, doing such work. Ultimately, I find that Mother Antonia’s ministry is one example that serves to ask me: will you do it? Will you risk your life to bring peace to the forgotten, the poor, the violent, and imprisoned? I find I have not an answer to give. I often wonder if I could forgive the drug dealers, rapists, and murders the way that Mother Antonia does. I find that, yes; it is something I think would be good to do, even if I am yet unsure how. As I reflect on the example of Mother Antonia, I find it difficult to imagine how she so thoroughly embodies non-violence that she has become it—even to the extent that she no longer seems to fear violence. I wonder if that is something I will ever learn. And it occurs to me that her degree of theological attainment is one I may never achieve!
Bibliography
“Eudist Servants of the Eleventh Hour.” [on-line] available from www.eudistservants.org/community.html., accessed May 8, 2008.
“LA Priest Joins Mother Antonia’s Prison Ministry in Tijuana.” Tidings. [on-line] available at http://www.the-tidings.com/2006/1201/tjpriest.htm, accessed May 8, 2008.
Jordan, Mary and Kevin Sullivan. The Prison Angel: Mother Antonia’s Journey from Beverly Hills to a Life of Service in a Mexican Jail. New York: Penguin Press, 2005.
----. [In person] Book Signing Event at Barnes and Noble in San Diego, Summer of 2005.
April 27, 2008
Random Observations
1. It struck me today, how odd and fragile life is. As I was returning home from a memorial at church, my roommate was just getting home from a wedding. The celebration of a life just past and the celebration of new life created by the union of two people. Both of these are celebrated everyday.
2. I have been studying Liberation theology this semester. From my readings I have a renewed sense of how much I have, although be American standards I may only have meager means. Every dollar I spend is taking on more meaning. I know I have too many pairs of shoes in the closet, even though I just gave six pairs away. I was happy that my husband gave a local homeless man $3 in response to a request for help as we walked by last night; it made the $5 sandwich we had gone out to get for dinner feel like a feast! I shutter to think that what I spend in a week (even though it is not much) is equal to what some people make in year. How do they survive the lack? How do we survive the guilt? How can we do it differently?
3. I have to preach next week, what should I preach on?
4. I would rather be growing food in this 90 degree heat, than writing Hebrew Bible, theology, pastoral care, and ethics papers--it just seems, well, more real even if I only grow enough for family and friends. That seems more ethical in the light of the global food crisis, which is merely a crisis of hoarding and transportation than an actual lack of food.
5. Finally I saw "sicko" and was heartened to hear someone saying that we do have the money to provide care to all Americans, we just lack the will. I was heartened to hear someone saying that democracy is in opposition to capitalism with fosters corporatism. But I was disheartend to recall that my step father was only one of 18,000 to die each year because they lack health care.
6. my heart both breaks and breathes again when I think about the wider world beyond my region; a world so vast and diverse I cannot comprehend it.
2. I have been studying Liberation theology this semester. From my readings I have a renewed sense of how much I have, although be American standards I may only have meager means. Every dollar I spend is taking on more meaning. I know I have too many pairs of shoes in the closet, even though I just gave six pairs away. I was happy that my husband gave a local homeless man $3 in response to a request for help as we walked by last night; it made the $5 sandwich we had gone out to get for dinner feel like a feast! I shutter to think that what I spend in a week (even though it is not much) is equal to what some people make in year. How do they survive the lack? How do we survive the guilt? How can we do it differently?
3. I have to preach next week, what should I preach on?
4. I would rather be growing food in this 90 degree heat, than writing Hebrew Bible, theology, pastoral care, and ethics papers--it just seems, well, more real even if I only grow enough for family and friends. That seems more ethical in the light of the global food crisis, which is merely a crisis of hoarding and transportation than an actual lack of food.
5. Finally I saw "sicko" and was heartened to hear someone saying that we do have the money to provide care to all Americans, we just lack the will. I was heartened to hear someone saying that democracy is in opposition to capitalism with fosters corporatism. But I was disheartend to recall that my step father was only one of 18,000 to die each year because they lack health care.
6. my heart both breaks and breathes again when I think about the wider world beyond my region; a world so vast and diverse I cannot comprehend it.
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