Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice

Cut Off--from the Land and the Body: Note from Solitary Confinement

Friends,

Thank you for praying these past months and reading these letters from a man many of you have never met, one of thousands of men and women warehoused in prison cells across our land. This is special--you praying for a guy from another world and race and background, reading his thoughts from that cell. Catholics used to use a term more often, The Mystical Body of Christ. When that body, our body, grows, we might not feel it immediately, but the new member grafted into feels the whooooosh of new life flooding in, the sense of connectedness to something bigger.

Neaners (José Israel Garcia) has helped me understand better what that feels like. And what it demands. Of both him and us. For him, it means letting himself fully belong to a new body, not the Sureño gang identity (though it's hard to technically shed, like one of us shredding up our passports). That said, Neaners has recently written that he no longer wants to use that street name he's worn for years. 

I was thinking of my name Neaners and I wanna go by Nini instead.  

I usually hear people close to me call me Nini, like when I was a little boy. 

But I wanna let “Neaners” rest.

It challenges me to consider what parts of my identity I might "let rest," that I no longer need as I belong to something greater.

Below is a reflection of Nini's on what it is to belong to a new Body.

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Cut Off: the Land and the Body

The other day I was reading Deuteronomy 11:13-23 and it was talking about the rain and the land. God giving rain so the harvest will be good, et. But reading of this reminded me of when Paul starts talking about the body—saying how’s the hand gonna tell the ear “we don’t need you.” How we gonna hear? Or the eye…something like that. Me entiendes? Which verse am I talking about? Well, anyway, that verse about the body somehow got me thinking about Alex, the one they call “Dirty” on the streets, and Nick Silva, in and out of hospitals and drug treatment centers. 

 We’re all a body, you, me and Nick y Alex. I know that this desire to help—or these homies helping me—has been in my heart for months. 

So as I was reading Deut, it came to me: like, you guys are God showering us with rain to grow. By showering us love, writing, answering phone calls and so on, and most importantly, by believing in us. We’re like the scums of this world, rotten roots, dried out plants. That’s why homies love you all, dogg. Because you’re not even caring what people in society say—judges, lawyers, parole officers or juras [police].

I know you’ve had people tell you que I wasn’t ready or that I was playing you because I’m just doing jail talk or that Alex is a junkie, that Nick is a fuckup. And you’ve also heard us give up on ourselves over and over again, not knowing what to do. But you’ve always given us hope, even if we fall back, you’ll tell us something that’ll bring us together.

We may be sick, but you refuse to let us get “cut off.” That’s what the verse about the land, and then the body made me think of.

Oh, homie, I found it. 1 Corinthians 12:14-26. That’s tight, bud.

 

AN IMPOSSIBLE BIBLE? Review by Joe Beach

AN IMPOSSIBLE BIBLE?   by Joe Beach

I recently read a book that I just couldn’t put down. Book lovers know what I mean.  You glance at a book, you pick it up, peruse it, start reading it, and simply cancel all other reading until you’ve finished. Worse, when you do finish, you’re, sort of, sad that it ends – the same way you feel at the end of a great movie or a great meal.  Sometimes, though, these same books (or movies or meals) surprise you by being somewhat uncomfortable at first. Later, you end up enjoying them – even if you’re still not totally “sure” about what you think. 

That book was Christian Smith’s, The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture. You can probably already tell that I liked the book and, for the most part, agreed with its proposal. You can also probably tell, from the subtitle of that book, that Dr. Smith’s book is a critique and that the target of his critique is something called “Biblicism.” The subject of this book is, obviously, the Holy Bible – the Holy Scriptures of the Christian Church – and how we should read it. 

Satan and Empire -- by Brian Zahnd

by BRIAN ZAHND on JANUARY 25, 2012

Satan and Empire

When asked to identify the origin of Satan we are commonly directed to Isaiah 14. This is the passage where the King of Babylon is called Lucifer (Day Star) and described as “fallen from heaven” after coveting the throne of God.  But what should be readily apparent is that Isaiah is giving us a prophetic critique of empire by using the king of Babylon as a personification for the whole imperial project. This is quite clear from a simple reading of the text. Throughout Scripture (and especially in the book of Revelation) Babylon remains a prophetic symbol of empire and the kingdom of Satan.

Here are a few thoughts from Isaiah 14…

"It Is Completely Fire" - poetry by Katie Kilcup

"It is Completely Fire" Katie Kilcup

Icon: Maximos the Confessor

The Made Makers 

We are the made makers,

the makers of the made.

We cannot make geese

or the infinite web of feathers

and wind tangled in blades

of light,

or thickets of slight sun

wavering in underwater labyrinths.

 

We make the second made,

feather pillows and forks,

skyscrapers and silly-putty.

The given we have taken

and baked in the furnace mind,

until the tangle of the original

is laid straight in rulers,

clocks, kingdoms.

 

We are the puppet makers,

imitators all.

The grid of intention cages us,

beautiful parrots, glorious in color and song,

our language longs for height.

We are the made making,

furious with brows furrowed,

the sea escapes our cups. 

From the Lowest Pit: A Psalm from Solitary - by Neaners, with Chris Hoke

I confess I've always had trouble appreciating the Psalms. Though there's some lines that I cherish, I can get distracted by how the psalm can quickly turn into a rant--against all the enemies and evildoers, cursing them with violence sometimes, touting the singer's own innocence and righteousness. 

My mentor Bob would laugh and give me a hard time about this: "Chris, you're a songwriter and a worship leader--how can you not like the Psalms? They're songs, man, prayers. They're written by sinful people like us crying out, uncensored. It's cool that the Bible welcomes human prayers like ours. Just think of the guys in jail we love so much, how they could relate to the psalmists' raw cries." Bob knew how to bring me back to a text.

So below is a glimpse of one man in the pit Nini--when he was still in solitary confinement--relating to the Bibles' poetry of lament. Then, a sample of his own rap/psalm he sent me last week.

C.S. Lewis and the Orthodox Tradition: Part IV - Ron Dart

            Deification expresses human salvation as in inward process

            of transformation experienced within the life of the Church

           and leading to mystical union with God. As St. Basil put it, man

           is nothing less than a creature that has received the order to

           become god.                                              Chris Jensen

                                                         Road to Emmaus:  Vol.VIII, No. 2 (#29)

Road to Emmaus: A Journal of Orthodox Faith and Culture should be warmly congratulated and generously supported for their willingness to ponder the affinities between C.S. Lewis and the Orthodox Tradition. I have, in a previous article, reflected on the Road to Emmaus article-interview with Herman Middleton, ‘An Old Western Man: C.S. Lewis in Light of Orthodox Christianity’

(Vol. VIII, No. 1 # 28). I have also commented on the insights and problems of Timothy Ware’s article on Lewis as an anonymous or implicit Orthodox that was published in Sobornost (the same article was also published with much the same content in The Pilgrim’s Guide: C.S. Lewis and the Art of Witness: 1998). The fact Road to Emmaus has dealt with two articles on Lewis is more than worth noting.

Erasmus and the Fathers - with Ron Dart and Archbishop Puhalo

C.S. Lewis and the Orthodox Tradition: Part III -- Ron Dart

Again and again we have found that C.S. Lewis articulates a vision of Christian truth which a member of the Orthodox Church can whole heartedly endorse. His starting-point may be that of a Western Christian, but repeatedly his conclusions are Orthodox, with a large as well as a small ‘o’.

-- Bishop Timothy Ware 

Bishop Timothy Ware (Kallistos of Diokleia) gave a lecture to the Oxford C. S. Lewis Society on November 29^th 1994. The lecture was called ‘C.S. Lewis: an anonymous Orthodox’? The lecture was then published in Sobornost (the flagship magazine for the Society St. Alban and St. Sergius) in 1995. The idea that Lewis might be an anonymous Orthodox was, as Ware mentioned, suggested by a ‘senior Greek bishop from Constantinople’. The fact that Ware flags the pointer with a question mark is a hint and way into this lecture turned published article.

God's Book -- A spiritual exercise -- Murray Dueck

The Book

Have you ever peeked into someone's journal when they weren't looking: Possibly hoping to find out what they secretly thought about you? What was your heart looking for?  Connection, love, understanding, affirmation, intimacy...maybe all of the above? God loves that inquisitive excitement! Or at least when it comes to peaking in one particular book - His journal of our lives.

All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand.

 Psalm 139:16-18

Epiphany unplugged by Henry Smidstra

Old fashioned, I still prefer to send Christmas cards by snail mail. This year again I had to run out to the dollar store, and get some more cards; I quickly chose some nice ones, of the three wise men  on their camels trudging along in the desert … a card made in China to boot.  Later as I open my mail, what did I see? - A colourful Christmas card picturing three wise men kneeling before the baby in the manger.  I reflect on the significance of the small pericope in Matthew’s version of the “Christmas Story”, and on how it is portrayed in some of the romanticised and commercialized depictions of it. For me, the story of the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem would not be complete but for this significant event, of the Epiphany as told by Matthew. We are called to attention that East and West have met and embraced, and from the East that we need to heed the message of the significance of the miracle of the incarnation of God and humanity, of the real “estate” of Jesus.