U2charist Sermon

I had the great pleasure of preaching at two U2charists in the last two weeks, one in Darien Connecticut, and one in Arroyo Grande, California. A U2charist is a service to bennefit the Millennium Development Goals, and it uses U2 music throughout the service. Both services were amazing. The energy and enthusiasm was unparalleled in my church experience!

Below is my sermon from Darien, using these readings: Isaiah 58:6-9a, 1John 3:16-18, Matthew 25:31, 34-40

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My name is Robin Denney, I am from California, and I was a member of the Episcopal Young Adult Service Corps last year. I served as an agriculture instructor at a rural college in Liberia, West Africa, for one year. I very happy to have the opportunity to be here with you today.

We are gathered here today to join in the struggle against extreme poverty. Extreme poverty is something that we see in commercials on TV: dirty children with flies in their eyes. On the news we see people with their faces contorted with suffering. Sometimes our hearts are moved, but the commercial changes, and we move on with our lives.

I want to take you on a journey with me right now. I want to take you to Liberia for a few minutes. Liberia is a difficult place. Their civil war ended in 2003, and claimed the lives of 10% of the population. Poverty in Liberia is widespread, with more than 80% unemployment. The war destroyed so much, everything.

My students at the university were studying agriculture. They saw improving agriculture as the way forward for their country, and their passion and dedication inspired me. They wore western clothes, and the ones who could afford it drank beer in the evenings, sometimes to excess. Some of them cheated on their homework. They would sit around and argue with their friends about student politics and current events. In many ways they are like college students anywhere. But every single one of them, at some point in the last 15 years had a gun pointed at their head. Every one of them saw someone they cared about, murdered, and everyone one of them was forced to laugh as they watched atrocities.

My students wanted to get out into the communities and practice the development work they were learning about. So we started a community tree-planting project. We established 10 different orchards of Moringa trees, a tree that can be used to treat mal-nutrition, and my students did all of the promotion, and education with the communities. It was wonderful to get the chance to be out in the communities. The villages in Liberia are comprised of mud buildings with thatched roofs, with the occasional corrugated metal roof. The background is the tropical forests of Liberia. The women in the village spend much of their time cooking for the family. They also do a good portion of the farm work. The men work in agriculture unless they can find some other work. The children do chores like carrying the water, and helping with the cooking, but when they are not working, they are running around together. They build things, instead of using Leggos, they use garbage, and make cars that actually roll. They laugh and scream and chase each other. And if they can find a ball, they will play soccer until they fall down with exhaustion.

My students and I planted one of our Moringa orchards at a local orphanage. When we arrived with the trees, the children saw us a quarter of a mile away, and they ran down the hill, and across the rice patties to help us carry the trees. The girls were cradling the trees in their arms, and some of the boys were balancing them on their heads. I heard one girl say, “this is my tree, I’m going to water it every day.” And one of the boys said, “We’ll be eating it, and climbing it!” We showed the kids how to dig the holes and plant the trees, and pretty soon there was dirt flying everywhere, and kids running around laughing and squealing. These are real children.

One in five of these real children will die before reaching the age of five. And of the girls who survive, one in six of them will die in childbirth.

Suffering and death are things that, in our culture, we don’t expect to happen, and we are consumed by the fear that these things will happen to us. But in places like Liberia, they understand that everyone suffers and everyone dies. But they live their lives anyway, and focus on the things that matter most: relationships, caring for people, laughter, singing, dancing, and praising God.

We have so much to learn from the people of Liberia. We have so much to gain from entering into relationship with people who see life differently then we do. It’s not about feeling guilty, it’s not about having pity, it’s about opening ourselves to the experience, offering ourselves up in action. And it’s not about the outcome of our actions. The outcome of life is death. But everyone knows that it’s not your death that’s the most important thing, it’s how you live you life in between.

God’s call to us is clear in the readings we heard today:
“To loose the bonds of injustice… to let the oppressed go free, to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house.” [Isaiah 58:6-7]
From the Gospel—to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit those who are sick and in prison. And the reading from 1stJohn “Let us love not in word or speech, but in truth and action.” [1John 3:18]

Why is God calling us to do all of these things? Is it because God messed up, and we’re supposed to fix it? Let’s look back at the reading from 1stJohn. “How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?” We do these things, because it is in the doing, and the trying, that the love of God abides within us. and that we become part of God’s redeeming love in the world. This is an epic journey that God is calling you to: a journey of extreme action. And God is calling you just as you are, right here, right now. This is dangerous work. It will open your eyes to the suffering of the world, and once the eyes of your heart are opened, they will never be closed again. The enormity of the despair of the world is so great, it feels as though we will drown in it. But it is only in being with that despair, that we can come to understand true joy: the joy that God’s love can redeem even this!

I invite you to take your service bulletin home with you tonight, and spend some time with these readings. Listen to where God is calling you in your life.

We are gathered here tonight to celebrate the Millennium Development Goals. The Millennium Development Goals are about action. In 2000, at the largest gathering of world leaders in history, they unanimously approved the Millennium Development Goals. 189 countries said, we are humanity, and we stand united. We believe that every human being deserves a life free from poverty, injustice, and oppression. We are the world, and we have the power to change the world, through partnership and action. These goals that they agreed on are for us, the modern translation of Jesus’ call to action. And they are this: To eradicate extreme poverty, achieve universal primary education, promote gender equality and empower women, reduce child mortality, improve maternal health, ensure environmental sustainability, and develop a global partnership for development.

We each are called, as surely as Mother Teresa was called into the gutters of Calcutta, to pick up the dying and care for them. God is calling us to offer up our broken selves, just as we are. Not some day when we have our lives together, and we are prepared. Right now, just as we are tonight. Sometimes we feel like God couldn’t possibly be calling us, God only calls people who have it together, and aren’t afraid. Let me tell you, I have never been as afraid as I was on that plane to Liberia. I was sure that I had made a terrible mistake, that God couldn’t possibly be calling me after all. Throughout my year in Liberia, I was messing up, doubting God, depressed, loosing my faith, and failing at every turn. But now I see that it was through moving beyond fear that my life, my heart, my self was transformed.

God is calling you beyond your fears to be transformed by Love…and action.

What's up Next!

This year I am preparing for several exciting short-term mission trips including: Honduras to lead a youth group building houses, El Salvador to visit my sisters, brother-in-law and nephew who are missionaries there and to work on a tree project, and Nevada to lead a youth group repairing houses.

I am also preparing for another year long mission trip, which I hope to leave on late this year. I do not yet have an assignment finalized, but I will be going as a member of the Young Adult Service Corps of the Episcopal Church.

My assignment will be in agriculture. I am passionate about how improving subsistance agriculture and making it more locally sustainable has a huge impact on communities. Improved production leads to better nutrition, money for education and health care, and perhaps most importantly: hope. I want to work with community members, children, and orphans, and plant demonstration gardens.

If you are interested in joining with me on this journey as a pray sponsor, or donor, please send me an email! ( redenney99 at yahoo.com) I need to raise a total of $12,000 to fund all of these projects.

If you are interested in supporting me financially, please send a check to:
St. Luke's Episcopal Church
Memo: "Missionary Fund"
PO Box 1168
Atascadero, CA 93423
(in order for the donation to be tax deductible, the check must be filled out in this way)

I will be preaching at a U2charist in Arroyo Grande, CA at St. Barnabas Episcopal Church on Sunday April 6 at 5pm. U2charist is a church service with U2 music, used to educate people about the Millennium Development Goals, and to raise money to support these goals.

Convention Address

The suffering in Liberia is not unlike suffering in other places of the world. Jesus calls us out into the world, to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, visit the sick and those in prison. We are called to be a people of action, people who go out and meet the needs of the suffering.

But it’s not just about what we get done or the outcome, it’s about relationship. It’s about allowing the people we call the “least of these” into our hearts, and being willing to be let into their hearts. And then we realize that we aren’t different after all. We are the same beloved children of a loving God.

I wasn’t sure what stories to share with you from a year’s worth of experiences. But after the Bishop Elect’s sermon yesterday, I want to talk to you about my own faith crisis. I signed up to be an Episcopal missionary because I was feeling unfulfilled in the work I was doing. I thought that somehow in becoming a missionary I would be zapped with extra special faith. That I would feel the presence of God with me all the time, and all I had to do was show up.

It didn’t take me long to realize that that wasn’t how it was going to work. And in the face of the corruption, hopelessness, and the evil that had come from the Civil War, my picture of God just wasn’t big enough to hold it all. I stopped going to church… I was a missionary who didn’t go to church. And I stopped praying. I would lay on my bed staring at the ceiling, defiantly daring God to show up. And all I felt was emptiness. I became depressed. I felt as though I had mistaken my calling. I felt unfulfilled just as I had felt in my jobs in the states. And I would have given up, if it wasn’t for all of you. You supported me financially and with prayer, and read my emails. I couldn’t bear to let you down, and I wanted to be the person you believed me to be.

A friend of mine emailed me some advice at that point. It was, “I know all you feel like is lying around, but that just makes it worse, you’ve got to get out and see where it is things are going right, where your passions are.” I didn’t want to listen to her, but the other way wasn’t working. I thought about it for some time, and realized that there were a lot of things that I loved about my life in Liberia.

I was an instructor teaching agriculture at a college, and I loved my students. I so valued the relationships and the respect that had grown between us. Their enthusiasm for learning was exciting to me. And I realized that even though I was completely unprepared to be a college lecturer (I hadn’t even known that that would be what I was doing), somehow the resources always showed up. Whether it was a book or a website or a good idea, it was always enough. And I finally saw that God was there.

I also loved the time I spent with my friends. We would visit each other’s houses in the evening or go to the local bar and watch the sunset under the palm trees, and we would talk for hours at a time, because that was all there was to do. And as we talked about it, the frustrating things of the day became funny. And God was there too.

I was able to go visit some villages near the university, and I so enjoyed talking to the women, and hearing their struggles, and what their lives were really like. And I could see God in them too.

I was surprised to realize how much of my life I was passionate about, but I didn’t know how to change things so that I could focus on the things I loved best. And then something happened to shake everything up. Some of the students staged a violent protest, and school was shut down for a month. Fellow teachers and I fled from our houses and from campus, on foot, a few miles away where we sought refuge with a friend for a couple nights. The violence only lasted a couple days, and the president of the country herself came to reconcile the two sides to each other. But what I realized was that while I was afraid, what I was most afraid of was being sent home. So with the month that we were out of school, I started to focus more of the things I loved best.

I ended up spending more time in a village called Melekie. I got to know the women’s group there, and they were remarkable. Melekie is a village of about 2,000 people which had no access to safe drinking water. One of the curses of poverty is that it can rob people of the belief that they can do anything to help themselves, but these women were different. With no resources, they had built a school building out of mud and sticks to serve as the facility for a skills training institute, because they believed that through skills the women would be able to lift themselves out of poverty and feed their children. But they had no money to buy the beginning supplies. We worked together on grant proposals, and they figured out how to make their program sustainable and prepared budgets. We were able to build the first latrine in Melekie, we got two wells drilled, and two more repaired, and we got the money they needed to start skills training in four areas. We accomplished a lot. But what was most important to me was the relationships. The women knew that this money wasn’t coming from some faceless benevolent source in the sky. It was coming from people who had heard their story, and were touched by it. People who cared about them, and wanted to help. And I was there on your behalf. And they were so excited, and they send their greatest thanks.

Another project I started working on was with my students. I had taught them about a tree whose leaves are essentially like a multi-vitamin, and it can be used to treat malnutrition and many diseases. The students were very excited about this tree, and they were passionate about development, but hadn’t gotten a chance to work on it. So we started a simple project, where the only cost was the seed. The students designed it. They chose ten communities near the school to plant pilot orchards, and then did 15 satellite orchards. They did all the work to engage and excite the communities, educate them on the uses and care of the trees, and assist with the actual labor. I got to go along and mostly stand aside and watch them shine. I was blown away. The same students I could barely get to do their homework the semester before, now they were dedicating their time and resources to volunteer. I was so inspired by them.

The last thing I did differently is I got more involved in the class I was teaching. I only had four students that semester, and I wasn’t taking it as seriously as I could. We were working on designing a cattle project, which is something I was supposed to have been working on all along. We would go out to the site, which was thick with jungle brush, and we cleared a path around the outside wielding machetes side by side, so that we could make a map and design the facilities. They taught me how to swing a machete, and I taught them how to use a protractor. And besides talking about business plans and improving livestock production, we talked about their dreams, their frustrations, the terror that they had experienced during the war. And we didn’t solve anything. But I for one felt completely different. I called them my boys, even though they were older than me. And they called me their fearless leader, even though I fainted the first time I used the machete. And we formed relationships that made it all worthwhile.

Not much had changed in terms of the circumstances between the first semester and the second semester, the same frustrations still existed, and yet everything had changed for me, because my attitude had changed. Finally I had opened myself. My expectations were not met, but the Spirit was there all the same, waiting for me to say yes.

Mission work will change your life. We are all called to mission work, out of our comfort zones, into the dark and scary places of our lives and of the world. Because it is in the dark and scary places that we finally are able to see that candle that Jesus lit in our hearts. It is in only in the very valley of the shadow of death, where everything else that distracts us falls away, and we realize that small flickering weak flame is the most important thing of all.

We are broken people living in a broken world. But how could there be miracles if we weren’t. God uses us, flawed as we are. Missionaries don’t have some extra special faith, we are just as broken as everybody else, but we said yes anyway.
What will you say “Yes” to? What will our Diocese say “Yes” to? The Bishop Elect said yesterday that we are working on building foundations, by listening and by acting. I hope that our Millennium Development Task Force will be part of that process, and that it will serve as a catalyst for each congregation to begin the process of discerning where they are called in mission, and where we are called as a Diocese. Because we are called to love and to go. To love God and each other, and to go out into the world and be the face and hands and heart of Christ in the world.

And to quote the Bishop Elect again, “Don’t call me Lord, and then not do what I say.” We are called out of fear into great joy.

I leave you with a quote from a song we sang yesterday, “Be not afraid, I go before you always, come, follow me.”

Home Again

Well, my year in Liberia is now over, and I have returned to California.

For those of you who are from my sponsoring churches, thank you for your love and support. For those of you who have followed my emails, passed on to you from someone else, thank you for reading. Writing these updates has been a time of reflection for me each month, and I'm glad that so many of you found them meaningful too.

The transition back to "normal" life has been difficult. So thank you for your patience while I re-settle. I hope to start visiting the 8 churches that supported me in November. Hopefully by then I will know what I'm going to be doing next as well.

As I look back over all my emails from this year, one message rings out to me: On the other side of fear is an experience waiting to change your life and other's lives too. I won't call it an adventure, it's just life whether in the forests of West Africa or the suburbs of central California, there is fear and there is the wonder of moving beyond it. When traveling to Liberia I was afraid of what living in a post-war culture meant, I was afraid of failure, of making a fool of myself, of catching some strange illness… But after a while, I was too busy with my every day life to be afraid anymore. Perhaps it was the realization that even failure was better than nothing. And if God can make something wonderful out of all my feeble effort and failure, than maybe I should stop worrying about the outcomes, and concern myself with the doing and living.

May God richly bless you in all your struggles, and as you journey, wrap Her arms around you, drawing you ever closer to Her bosom.

We Have Work to Do!

Last week I got to visit an orphanage in Gbarnga. My students and I are working on developing ten pilot Moringa orchards in communities near Cuttington. Once I am gone, the students will continue to monitor the orchards and advise the communities on the cultivation and use of Moringa to treat malnutrition, internal parasites, and much much more.

Last week we were planting at Felleta Children’s Village. There is no car road to their home, but when our truck pulled up half a mile away, the children saw us. Their happy voices echoed up to us from across the swamp, and they ran down the hill and across the rice paddies to greet us. They helped me carry the seedlings back up to the orphanage. The girls cradling them in their arms like a doll. One boy balanced his on top of his head with the biggest grin on his face. As we made our way across the planks which serve as bridges in the rice paddy, and up the hill I could hear the small girls talking behind me, “This is my tree, I’m gonna take care of it. I’m gonna give it water every day.” And a boy was saying, “We’ll be eating it, and climbing it!” I taught them how to plant the trees, and before I knew it, they were digging holes and planting trees like crazy. I was amazed to see even the small children join in like it was a fun game. They are such joyful children. It’s clear that their caretaker Samuel, who is a gentle soul, has had a very good influence on them. I wished I could spend more time with them, just being around them rubbed a lot of joy off on me.

I hesitated to tell you this story, happy orphans living in a mud brick house with dirt floors. Though it’s true, it certainly isn’t the bulk of my experience in Liberia. Just like every other place in the world, Liberia is a land of juxtaposition: joy and sorrow, wealth and poverty, frustration and elation. A few weeks ago I had to tell a student multiple times to put away his i-pod while we were doing a Moringa site assessment in a village. Last week I lost my temper with a student who was demanding I buy him books. I have been frustrated by corruption, disgusted by the common instances of what in the states we would call abuse and enslavement of women and children, and exasperated by the lack of justice. And at the same time I have been touched by the displays of affection between friends, impressed by the hospitality, dazzled by the bright colors and elaborate styles both in clothing and nature, amazed at the will and work by which people survive, and elated to find joy in the most unexpected places.

As I left the orphanage, I couldn’t help wondering what will become of the children. Will there be money to send them to high school? Family plays such an important role in this culture, will the other children and Samuel be as a family to them in the future? I don’t know, but what I do know is there is a lot of love in that mud brick house on the hill.

Orphanages are a relatively new phenomenon in Liberia. Before the war, orphaned children were mostly taken in by other family members, but the war left too many broken families, too many orphaned children, and too many people in dire need.

Everyone has a story about the war. My students have told me some of theirs: fleeing to live in a refugee camp in Guinea, walking for two weeks with no food, living for years in an internally displaced persons camp, working as security for the warlord Charles Taylor, seeing family members killed, and always narrowly escaping death.

It all sounds so foreign to our western ears, and yet, so much of the world has lived through coups and wars in this generation, a third of the world lives in abject poverty with no access to clean drinking water. Should we think of these things and feel guilty or blessed? Both attitudes just separate us from the suffering of the world. Both attitudes cause us to fear, and pray that such tragedy never befalls us. I know these attitudes because they have been my own in the past. But living in Liberia, and doing hurricane Katrina relief work has taught me that when the worst thing imaginable happens to people, when their deepest fears are realized, life still goes on, the community still exists, there is laughter and tears, there is work to do, an education to be had, food to cook, a house to build. Life goes on, and most importantly, Love abides. Just because our country is sheltered from much of the suffering of the world, does not mean that we escape it. If we can embrace that which we fear, reach out a hand, shed a tear, share a laugh… wouldn’t the world be a better place? Wouldn’t our lives be richer?

The other day I brushed the cobwebs off my bible, and opened it to James. “I by my works will show you my faith.” I don’t think doing good works is about getting into heaven, I think it’s about living into the best version of who we want to be, by letting go of fear to do, go, become, love!

It is up to all of us to change the world, there is no one else! In the words of my wise friend John, “Stop being afraid, we have work to do!”

White Woman Working?

A few days ago I unintentionally caused quite a stir. I was up earlier than usual, and decided to enjoy the lovely cool morning, and do a little out-doors work. The short-cut that I walk often, through the overgrown field, and across the ditch, to Phebe compound was getting rather more overgrown than is pleasant to walk through, and the narrow plank which serves as a bridge over the ditch had become tipsy enough that it had almost pitched Mary, Martha, and I into the ditch on more than one occasion. So I got out my cutlass (machete), sharpened it, and headed out to do a little brushing. My students have taught me how to brush, and while my skill at it could be considered deplorable, I can at least reduce an overgrown area to a less overgrown area. I was a bit embarrassed at first, because people laugh at me just for carrying a cutlass or shovel, let alone using one. And I forgot that the shortcut is used by at least a hundred people. So I had to stop every few minutes to let someone pass by. They did laugh a lot, but they thanked me too. It is customary to thank someone who is working. It is a nice tradition. And as a person who was working, it was very encouraging to be appreciated (it counteracted the laughter a bit). It was also a nice change to be greeted with “thank you” instead of the more common “White woman! White woman!”. I also straitened out the bridge and stabilized it a bit. It was a good couple hours work, and I came away with several new blisters, and a cut from sharpening the cutlass (my technique leaves something to be desired). For the rest of the day, people were coming up to me saying “I heard you were working this morning” or “thank you for brushing”. They even stopped to tell friends of mine that I was working. Even days later I’m still getting comments from people who heard about it.

It is interesting to me that of all the projects and things I have been working on here, by far, the most appreciation I have received was for the simple task of clearing a path. Brushing is considered one of the lowliest tasks. College professors would certainly not brush. As “white woman! white woman!” I am automatically put in a different category. People expect us to ride around in air-conditioned cars, and eat “European food” and certainly never engage in manual labor. Mary, Martha, and I tend to challenge their stereotypes. We walk most places or cram ourselves into taxis. We shop for groceries at the local open-air market, and eat Liberian food. I tend to do manual labor from time to time. I think what is most surprising to people is the act of humbling oneself. Apparently by some of the things we do, we are making the statement, “I am not above joining you in this.” The power of that cannot be underestimated. The times when I have felt most connected with Liberians are times when we have worked alongside one another, or just sat together and watched the world go by. In these moments, we have been connected and our differences seem much smaller somehow. I regret that these times have been fewer than I intended.

Mother Teresa said, “The only way to learn humility is through humiliation.” Humility is something I have far from mastered. But I am starting to feel differently about it. I used to feel guilty that I wasn’t humble enough, and I thought that humility had to hurt somehow. But now I think that humility can be joyful. If we are willing to humiliate ourselves, we open ourselves to all sorts of meaningful experiences with other people. Through our humiliation we can connect with, and empower others. Through humiliation we can conquer fear, and barriers that divide people.

What if we did one thing a week, or even one thing a month, that stretched us outside our comfort zone, that made us feel foolish, that opened us up to the experience of another? Last year, on the “Day without Immigrants”, there wasn’t any demonstration scheduled in Atascadero, and I wanted to go downtown and hold a sign in support of immigrants, stage my own demonstration, but I was too afraid. I have wanted to go walk through the north side of Paso Robles, talk to strangers on the street, practice my Spanish, but I was too afraid. How many times have I walked past a person in a wheelchair, or a homeless person and not even looked at them, because I was too afraid. I believe that the more we practice doing things we are afraid of, the less scary things will be! When I was on the plane to Liberia, I was about as scared as I have ever been. I was pretty sure I had made a terrible mistake, that after all my talk, and everyone’s support, I wasn’t actually capable, and it was too late. But Liberia has been wonderful to me. The fear has been dissolved, replaced by love. My heart has been stretched to care about suffering around the world. And my old fears seem feeble in the face of all there is to gain in human relationships.

We don’t have time and energy to waste on fear, let’s get to work and see how it changes us!

Snapshots

Community members, my students and I, after finishing planting a moringa orchard at the Leprosy Rehab Village.

Mary and I's godchildren Clarence and Clarencia, who are twins. This is a picture in our living room, from a day they came over to play. I would like to nominate them for cutest children in the universe.

My animal production systems class on our last day of lecture. (Senkro, Morlu, me, Jojo, and Beyan)

Martha and I peeling and eating Mangos that had just been knocked from the tree, at our favorite local establishment. Mango season was May and part of June. Mango trees are absolutely everywhere here, we could eat ourselves sick on them every day! Except it turns out Martha's alergic to the outside, and Mary to the inside, so that left more for me!

My students and I take a field trip to visit a school that has a cattle program. (if you look very close you can see a cow in the background).

Martha, me, and Mary at a shrove tuesday party.

My godson Clarence and I, after his baptism

Myself, Martha, and Mary at an agriculture field day where we discovered a group of napping cows (cows are not common in Liberia)

The house on campus where Mary and I live

Mary and I find local icecream after watching Cuttington win a soccer match.

Me and Martha with our new tropical christmas trees