How do we move toward the edge faithfully?

Earlier this summer, I heard from a member of the board of one of the organizations to whom the Christ Church Outreach Committee has consistently awarded grants in recent years. Cristosal works to promote justice, human rights, and democratic societies in Central America through strategic litigation, research, education, human rights monitoring, and assistance for victims of human rights violations. They were organizing a learning and solidarity trip to Guatemala in early September with a special focus on LGBTQI rights and protections in the area. Participants would be immersed in communities actively working to both augment legal protections in the Northern Triangle (Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador), as well as promoting the cultural changes needed to destigmatize those identifying as LGBTQI, many of whom have been victims of descrimination and violence. The trip is oriented around education and relationship building, focusing especially "on the trauma/psychosocial impacts of hate-motivated violence and discrimination" and "the role of religion in protecting or perpetrating rights violations." The board member encouraged me to consider going and to share the details of the trip with others at Christ Church. 

I happen to have known this board member for the last sixteen years, when we sang together in the choir that eventually sponsored me for ordination. I thanked her for being in touch and said I would forward the details to members of the parish who might be interested and ready to travel internationally in this way, which I did, but I added that I was not quite ready to leave my kids for a full five days. And then we celebrated the last day of school, and had a big BBQ on the lower lawn with the Ventana community, and I went on vacation for a couple weeks, and I didn't think much about it again until a friend mentioned that his wife had just come back from a two week long trip with her friends. While out for a run the next morning I thought, "My kids are five and seven now. My husband has travelled for weeks at a time since they were born. Is it really true that I can't leave them for a few days?" I've been so in the habit of staying near home since my children were born that I have to admit I didn't really even consider the invitation from Cristosal. But once I got past the hurdle of simply being away from my family, I found myself really curious about this program. I sent an email requesting more details. I prayed about it during my morning quiet time with God. I ruminated on going during my runs and hikes. And then I talked to a couple good friends and my husband, who encouraged me to go if I felt called. I sensed that the Spirit was stirring in this, as the thought of it simply wouldn’t let me go. I joined a planning call with others who had already committed to the program, and finally decided that I was in.

I’ve never been to Guatemala, but I have spent some time in both Honduras and El Salvador. Both of these trips were arranged in conjunction with the Church and were profoundly impactful. I went to Honduras while a Sophomore in college through a Duke Chapel partnership with Heifer International. As part of that experience, all of the students in our group took a semester-long class on the history of Central America and Honduras, liberation theology, and the role of the Church in addressing systemic inequality and promoting change. We reflected a great deal on the “why” of this trip. If we really wanted to support the people of the small village we would be staying with for a little over a week, was our visiting there really the most effective way to do that? Would the $25,000 or so that the trip would cost be better spent investing directly in the community? We were a motley group of undergraduates with no real construction skill, so who were we to go lay rebar and pour cement? We acknowledged to ourselves that our motives were not entirely pure: we hoped to be transformed by the trip, to build relationships, and prayed that these things justified in some small way our rather privileged involvement.

The trip was transformative. Truly. While I had grown up living close to the poverty line, I had never really seen the kind of lack that attended life in the villages of Honduras. It was one thing to read about exploitative economic policies and another to have dinner with the family of a sugar cane farmer whose wife explained how hard he worked, earning less than a dollar a day, and realize that the sweets I’d eaten all my life were so cheap because my society considered the worth of this person and his labor to be cheap: somehow less valuable than that of those living in the U.S. My faith was also deepened as I saw how the Church was instrumental in providing direct services - housing, medical and dental care, counseling, education - to those most on the margins.

I went to El Salvador in my second year of seminary as part of a relationship-building trip between the Divinity School and the Episcopal Diocese of El Salvador (which, while not in the U.S., is still a part of The Episcopal Church). After the civil war that tore the country apart from the late 70s through the early 90s, the Diocese was instrumental in relocating people whose entire livelihoods had been lost. With support from the wider Church, they built intentional communities, providing housing, schools, a clinic, and a Church all in a safe community, and partnered these places with non-profits working to provide greater opportunity to those who lived there.

Both trips expanded my sense of the work of the Church. They also reminded me, viscerally, of the profound interconnection of all our lives - not only mine and yours, but ours and those of the people of this wide and wild world. One of the things I most appreciated about those trips is that I had no real relationship to those I met outside of our common heritage as children of God. If not for the Church, I’m not sure how I ever would have met clergy who also worked full time as teachers or dentists in small villages in El Salvador, or laborers in pineapple farms, or learned from hardworking women how to clap tortillas between my hands while immersed in a cloud of smoke from the wood fire. It’s so easy here in the U.S. to associate “Church” with the liturgy, or the building, or the parish community, but every once in a while I’ve found it restorative - and perhaps necessary - to experience the Church as so much bigger and more varied in the ways that it exists around the world.

We talk a lot at Christ Church about “moving toward the edge” or the margins as a faithful response to Jesus’ call on our lives. There are ways to do this that only reinforce the systems of the world that perpetually divide us, but there are others that help us see through those illusory walls. It can be difficult to discern between the two, and even as I’ve made decisions in my life seeking to faithfully follow God’s voice, it’s possible I’ve missed invitations, or misunderstood them along the way. But I am grateful for the ways these trips changed me. I’m sure they both shaped the priest and the person I am today. How do we move toward the edge faithfully? Well, first, we have to be curious - genuinely - about what God wants for us and for the world, not assuming we already know or are already furthering God’s dream, always willing to reconsider and see things anew. And then we pray, we listen, we trust, we gather information. In short, we engage in discernment, humbly asking for God to make the way clear, and then when God does, we say yes. Sometimes we will get it wrong - that’s just how this being human thing goes - but even when we do, God will work with us to purpose something good.

I’m not sure what I’ll learn in Guatemala, or how I’ll be changed this time, but I am tremendously grateful for the opportunity to go and listen and pray. The group traveling with Cristosal includes several psychiatrists from the SF General Hospital, professors from UCSF, other professionals, and clergy. I trust I’ll learn as much from them as I do from those we meet in Central America. I’ll be eager to reflect on this experience with you all when I return! If you would be interested in participating in a trip like this in the future, please let me know.