Mary Adamski: Peace be with you

Pentecost usually charges me up. The idea of the Holy Spirit taking hold of my brain and expanding my understanding of my world with God in it, the imagery of tongues of fire alighting on all Christians through the ages, not just the first few; I can track that back to a brilliant teacher in a beginning theology class at my Jesuit alma mater.

If I’ve had a consistent pattern of prayer in my life, it’s been calling on the Holy Spirit and expecting the spark I need to get a good grade on the final exam. Or, if not the gift of tongues, to help me communicate, to be understanding, supportive, consoling, peacemaking when connecting with others … and to be at least intelligible when I write.

So I was pretty smug about assigning myself a column topic this month, attending a June 9 panel discussion on “Christian Responses to Oppression, A Courageous Conversation.” Challenging subject, speakers actively engaged in their topics and it was taking place the day after Pentecost. Gotta be a slam dunk.

The crowd of about 50 people at Church of the Crossroads came to hear an Episcopal priest, one of several Christian church leaders who took part in the struggle to challenge and overcome racial division — apartheid — in South Africa.

Father Michael Lapsley talked about the success in changing that country’s institutionalized oppression of its indigenous black Africans more than two decades ago. The world had a review of that triumphant history lesson in December when the story of Nelson Mandela, the prisoner who became the first black president, was retold after his death.

Lapsley spends months every year on a speaking tour around the world undaunted by wounds from a letter bomb attack that left him blind in one eye and with prosthetic hands.

What makes his message a Pentecost story is that, beyond looking back at history, he’s engaged in getting people to continue forward. Clearly racist attitudes, fears and anguish didn’t instantly switch off when the laws changed. The priest developed a “Healing of Memories” program while serving as chaplain of the Trauma Centre for Victims of Violence and Torture in Cape Town. It started out as a process for black and white South Africans to express their psychological, spiritual and emotional responses to their changing country.

Lapsley’s Institute for Healing of Memories now works with victims of war, genocide and violence in other countries.

“The power of telling your story heals,” Lapsley told the crowd. “People vomit out the poison of what has happened to them.”

The priest said that to have a “courageous conversation, we need to involve deep listening to hear the thoughts and fears that lead people to what they believe, listening and deep compassion.”

He said it is a powerful and courageous act for people to face and talk about “what has been done to us, what we have done and what we have failed to do.”

Too much information

Three other speakers shared the platform, exploring the ways Christian churches played a part in oppression, but were also the source of leaders in the fight to end it. That was true in the United States, spanning churches condoning slavery to Christian leadership in the civil rights movement, said one speaker. Another speaker followed the theme in the history of Hawaii, where Christian missionary descendants led the overthrow of the last monarch, while native Hawaiian churches were often the seats of royalist support. And another speaker looked at churches’ impact in the still raw subject of legalized same-sex marriage.

Quotable though they all were, it was an overloaded and overlong kind of program that drives a news reporter crazy. Too little space to fit it. A plethora of zinging statements that would bog down in giving the context and backstory. Too much information!

Some of the zingers from the lips of the veteran of the political and moral struggle in South Africa would be fuel for a “courageous conversation” in any parish, if we only would engage in that sort of thing.

Asked a question about his perception of racism in the United States, the priest said:

• “I get nervous when Christians say they are not racist. We need to face that there are layers and layers that shaped us. Racism is alive in the United States.”
• “There is no doubt to me that opposition to Obama is profoundly about racism.”
• “We need to face the politics of greed. Greed was the force behind slavery. Greed is a force in your national identity.”
• “Just contemplate what war is doing to the soul of the United States. Suicide by war veterans is at epidemic proportions. What would it mean for the United States that its greatness is because of its moral authority.”
• “What would it mean for Americans to have courage to campaign about the 2nd Amendment, that it wasn’t about children carrying guns.”

While I agreed with almost everything I heard that night, it was an unsettling event for me, definitely not an “ah-ha” vision of tongues of fire raining down.

If there’s any not-Catholic church where I feel that I belong, it’s the old Church of the Crossroads near University of Hawaii. It was the epicenter for citizens’ challenges to the immorality in government during the Vietnam War and the civil rights campaign of the 1960s. A dwindling, aging congregation, it is the only church here that institutionalized honoring Martin Luther King Jr., choosing a community activist each year for its Peacemaker award.

There were familiar faces in the crowd. I call them “the peace people.” Activists of various persuasions are the ones likely to congregate for workshops and speakers about peace and justice. I feel at home in such interfaith gatherings.

But there were only 50 of us. And most of us were “of an age.” In my mood, I was more likely to count who wasn’t there. Three clergy on the platform, only two in the audience. I spotted two other Catholics, both with “peace people” credentials. School’s out so there was no one to incentivize youngsters to come. Today’s self-proclaimed justice seekers are more likely to hunker down in a tent on a sidewalk somewhere than come out to hear ideas discussed.

All we are saying …

What set me up for this low reading on the hope meter was watching a PBS Hawaii show a few nights earlier, a rerun of a concert by Peter, Paul and Mary, those dear old activist musicians. I wallowed in a solitary tearfest singing along with music that expressed what America was experiencing in the 1960s, 70s, 80s. Intelligent, moral and witty commentary of unjust wars, racism and other flaws of America, it was literate music, no need for X-rated when there are so many better words.

These theme songs were playing counterpoint in my head while listening to Father Lapsley and the others. “How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man?” Civil rights legislation wasn’t the last word, the answer to that question is still “Blowin’ in the Wind.”

“All we are saying is give peace a chance,” a musical statement at a time when anti-war sentiment led thousands to march on Washington more relevant than ever today. But who knows the words or has the energy to march.

Change the country’s name and here’s a song about America’s relentless involvement in wars that might have just been ripped from the headlines:

“The junta is assisted by Americans. And if $60 million seems too much to spend in El Salvador: they say for half a billion they could do it right, bomb all day and burn all night, until there’s not a living thing upright.”

Reflecting on past sins and crimes still being perpetuated, we like to use the expression “history repeats itself” as if it’s a force of nature, fate, no human hands or minds involved.

I still seem to be mired in a dim view despite the fact that the insights I absorbed earlier this month from veterans of the struggles for justice and peace actually were tinged with hope. Despite other negative lyrics, the Woody Guthrie song made famous by my favorite trio and most likely to be sung today is upbeat: “This land is your land, this land is my land.” Father Lapsley believes that “The power of telling your story heals.”

I was looking back at the liturgy for Pentecost, the Gospel of John. The story begins with the disciples huddling behind locked doors, fearful, now that their leader had left this earth.

When Jesus appeared among them, he didn’t scold them for cowering in the shadows. He told them to get out of themselves, get on with spreading the good news. “As the Father has sent me, so I send you. And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them: receive the Holy Spirit.”

And how did Jesus greet them, not once, but twice? “Peace be with you.”

The next thing they knew, the disciples were out in the street crowds, talking up a storm in dozens of languages they didn’t even speak, telling new and outrageous ideas about forgiving enemies and loving their neighbors. We’ve had those radical concepts ingrained in us for 2,000 years, in word, but not necessarily in deed. Just look at the news.

Peace be with you; how’s that working for you in your life? There’s clearly still a need for more courageous conversation.