News from Sophia Christi

Almost 20 years ago I was living in Eugene when an acquaintance invited me to visit a graduate program in the Bay Area. It sounded exciting and I decided to check it out. The visit went well and I met some wonderful people. But when I left I had the oddest feeling—like something was pulling me to that city—but the feeling wasn’t connected to the school itself! Back in Eugene the feeling continued to grow. I told my spiritual director I felt strangely “pulled” to Oakland, but not specifically to that school or program. It didn’t make sense and I didn’t even like the city. I couldn’t see myself living there at all…   But eventually I went. I felt ‘called’ there.

It wasn’t easy leaving everything behind, letting go of all that was familiar—family, friends, the network I’d created that gave my life meaning. And when I arrived and met with the Director of the school I quickly realized it truly wasn’t for me. So I continued to explore the area, trying to figure out why I’d packed up and left everything else behind. There were a series of frustrating dead-ends and I felt adrift for months. Then one afternoon I walked into an admissions office on the GTU campus and met a warm, friendly woman who welcomed me with open arms. I still wasn’t sure this was the reason I’d moved there, but it somehow confirmed my risky decision to leave friends and work to follow that odd pull to Oakland. As it turned out I spent three years there, and those years prepared me for what I am doing here today. God had led me there. It changed my life.

“Leave all you know and journey to a new land I will show you,” God said to Abram and Sarai. Leave all you know… Leave all you know… (more…)

“Not even a month and I’m already weary,” a friend said yesterday. “How will I ever make it through 4 years of this?” Another responded “I don’t read the paper or listen to the news anymore. I know I need to stay informed but I can’t handle the daily assault on things that matter so much to me. I don’t want to give up but I need a break and I don’t know what else to do.” “I know how you feel,” I said to them both. “I feel the same way.” People come into my office each week with overwhelming personal and family issues. Yet those issues rest in a cauldron of social unrest and general anxiety that amplifies their concerns because the foundation of the world appears to be crumbling.

When the ground gives way beneath us people scramble for something to hold onto. I remember being at the epicenter of the Loma Prieta earthquake in Santa Cruz, 1989. Like most people, I suppose, I had always taken for granted that the ground I stood on was dependably solid and stable. But in those few minutes the earth itself gave way. It shook and rumbled with an unnerving roar and I reached for the door of my office, holding on, unsure the building would remain standing. When the first wave was over a second, third and fourth followed.

When it seemed safe to leave and go outside, everything was absolutely and eerily still. I made my way home through debris cluttered roadways, downed power lines. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw my house still standing but inside the shelves were askew, their contents thrown across the floor. Cupboard doors were blown open, dishes flung and broken. The rooms were in shambles. Now and again the earth would thunder to life once more. Many chose to sleep outside that night and the next as aftershocks continued. Downtown looked like a war zone. Heaps of rubble were everywhere. The bookshop, coffee shop and other local landmarks were gone. Many died—friends of friends, neighbors. All roads leading into and out of town were impassable. We were cut off from the world for over a week. The inability to move in or out was frightening.

These memories return as I look at the state of collapse in so many of our inner cities with people stranded and dying on our streets, social networks and environmental protections threatened, healthcare divorced from a basic need for support in sickness, the value of a healthy society shattered, pieces strewn across the lawns and fields of every town. The earthquake mirrors my experience of what I see and feel happening today. The ground of shared reality has come undone. Gaping craters appear where there were once stable roadways. Even many of our operating principles lie in piles of rubble or are threatening to collapse. Laws we passed and thought invincible are being torn from their moorings. The nation-town has crumbled. Everyone is in shock, waiting for the next wave of after shocks. (more…)

In the dark days after the destruction of Judah Isaiah tells his listeners—do not be afraid. Look! he says. Your God is coming! Your God is coming to save you.  In these dark days, when one report after another gives us reason to worry about the future of our planet, our nation, our struggling communities—wouldn’t we love to believe God will come and save us? Isaiah’s words lie at the heart of Advent, this season dedicated to WAITING and HOPE.

The unfathomable abyss of God’s mysterious ways, God’s pregnant darkness, fosters terror. We teeter at the edge of a vast unknown, often grabbing at whatever knobs and handles are available trying to gain control. But the controls are not, and never were, in our hands. Instead we are asked to wait—faithfully, patiently, expectantly—trusting God is with us and will, somehow, save us.

There are those who believe that Jesus will return and right the wrongs of humankind. The words of James have been used to validate that belief and argue for the second coming as an antidote to the world’s woes. But perhaps the most important words for us in James’ letter are found in his last sentence: model your lives on the example of the prophets who suffered tremendous hardships patiently while carrying God’s message to the people. (more…)

Like many of you, this past Wednesday I woke with a knot in my stomach and quickly fell into a state of mourning. First came the shock and disbelief, the initial panic, then the race for a thread of hope, and finally the numbness, the cold paralysis. Though I went to the office and worked through the day, once I got home I found I couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t read. My heart prayed without words. I felt a deep sense of solidarity with all the frightened ‘others’ in the country and the world who were justly terrorized by these horrifying election returns. In my mind’s eye I saw many families in agony, anticipating their loved ones being torn away from them—their fathers, mothers, children, aunts, uncles, cousins—their own circle of support wrenched and broken by immigration officials.

As she was walking down the street, a friend told me later, she met the eyes of a newly arrived neighbor she had smiled at once before. The woman, Latina, saw my friend’s smile and hurried across a busy street to ask for a hug, though the two had never met. The woman dissolved in tears in my friend’s arms, speaking in a rush of Spanish my friend didn’t understand. Holding her close she simply said “we are with you. I live just up the street. You are not alone.” (more…)

Naaman is a Syrian army commander, a man of power and influence, but he is suffering from leprosy. Putting his superior rank on display he rides into Israel seeking the prophet Elisha. Word has it that Elisha is a healer. He expects an impressive and personal meeting with Elisha but instead is met by a messenger who conveys the prophet’s instructions. He is to go wash in the Jordan River. He manages to get beyond this affront to his status only when his own servants intervene. His pride is overshadowed by his desperate need for healing. He follows Elisha’s instructions, bathes in the river Jordan, and comes out clean. Now, overwhelming grateful, he offers Elisha extravagant gifts as payment for restoring his health. Elisha refuses. He will not take credit for something God has done. So Naaman asks if he might take a mound of Israeli dirt back with him to Syria. In the culture of the time gods are seen as territorial, so worship must be anchored in the soil of a god’s region. Naaman needs actual dirt from Israel to worship Israel’s God and begin building that relationship.

The ten lepers who approached Jesus in Luke’s Gospel were also desperate. They had no prestigious position to advance, they simply knew Jesus’ reputation as a healer and called out to him as he approached the village. Like Elisha, Jesus didn’t touch any of them. He simply gave them an instruction to show themselves to the priests who held the keys for their re-entry into society. On the way, they were healed. (more…)

“Then God spoke to Moses, ‘Go down at once to your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt, for they have corrupted themselves. They have made for themselves a molten calf and are worshiping it and crying out ‘This is your god, O Israel!’” God is angry and wants to consume this ungrateful people in an almighty rage!

But Moses pleads with God for their sake, reminding God of the promise made to Abraham, Sarah, and all those others back in the day. “Remember?” Moses asks God. “Remember? You swore to them you would make their descendants as numerous as the stars! You said ‘all this land I will give your descendants as their heritage forever.”

And God remembered.  Mercy flowed. And God forgave the people.

We are those descendants of Abraham and Sarah, God’s people. And at 7 billion strong we are certainly growing toward being as numerous as the stars! But the land we were promised—this land, this earth—is not only OUR heritage. It is the heritage of our descendants as well, and their descendants, and theirs and theirs, on and on forever. It is our Home, the only home we know. It is where our children are born. It is where our loved ones die and are buried. We live and learn here, side by side, as sisters and brothers wrestling with limits, harboring gifts and dreams planted within each of us by a loving God for the good of everyone. But we have forgotten who we are and where we are. We got lost somewhere on the trail of ambition and achievement, spoiling our environment in the process. (more…)

I read something in the New York Times a week ago that said American’s anxiety has ratcheted up 150% since 2004 and has more than doubled in just the last 8 years. These results were based on a study of internet searches over the last decade. I thought about this troubling fact when I began working with today’s readings. Here is Jesus saying: “I have come to light a fire on the earth.” If you think I’ve come to bring peace, you’re wrong; I’ve come to sow division. And division we have—division in the world, in the nation, in the church… As highly social beings, dependent on each other for our well-being and survival, division of such magnitude makes us very anxious.

Division isn’t new, of course. In Jeremiah’s time the political situation was at least as contentious and bitter as it is in our own day, just not as global! Judean leaders were divided into factions, with differing views and differing political alliances and waged war to secure their interests just as ours do. In the end Judah fell, Jerusalem and its Temple were destroyed and the movers and shakers of society—the soldiers, craftsmen, religious leaders and nobility—were all deported to Babylon. Only the poorest and weakest remained in the land.

Jeremiah’s account of how he received his commission as a prophet includes these words: “The Lord said to me ‘Before you were born I dedicated you, a prophet to the nations I appointed you….This day I set you over nations and over kingdoms, to root up and to tear down, to destroy and to demolish, to build and to plant.” These are words of confirmation for Jeremiah as well as words of division; they are also words of hope. Fire on the earth is destructive, but it is also purifying and regenerative. Some trees like the giant Sequoia and jack pine, for instance, depend on fire to release their seeds so they can germinate. Without fire there would be no next generation. Fire stimulates and revitalizes closed systems, infusing them with new life. (more…)