poets.of.poverty.and.peace.

yesterday i went to the 7th annual gathering on peace and justice, hosted by the peace community that lives around the Sacred Heart parish in south Camden. in between sessions, i wandered a bit through the cracks and crevices and passageways of the church and up and down the dirty-snow-lined streets of row houses around it. my camera's eyes were captured by some stunning works of art done by parishioners - some vibrant iconic paintings hung in frames on walls in sacred spaces in the church, and some guerrilla poetry slammed gracefully on sheets of wood and nailed to the windows and doors of abandoned houses and storefronts in the neighborhood. here is a little video giving glimpses of these bursts of beauty and light in the 'dark' of a city many assume to be as good as dead or dying. the song is from the Taize community, saying "La tenebre n'est point tenebre devant toi; la nuit comme le jour est lumiere" / Our darkness is never darkness in your sight; the deepest night is clear as the daylight. [amen]

snow.havoc.means.skating.to.school.

the city of Camden is too poor to plow the streets. i don't think they even own snowplows. maybe we're not the only place in the country where this is true, but wow, it makes a big difference in the way things look and work after a snowstorm. it's basically up to the first brave souls who go out after the blizzard to beat it down as they drive through the drifts. sometimes those few, fortunate neighbors who have possession of a pick-up truck with a plow thing on the front will help clear up a path through part of the neighborhood to make it passable. hmm, what does 'passable' look like to you?

after 2 or so feet (somewhere between 25 and 27 inches) of snow fell this past weekend, 'passable' in our case means that the width of the neighborhood streets has shrunk by about half due to the cars parked on either side with several feet of snow surrounding them. in the remaining space, down the middle of the road, there is a rutted, uneven inch or three of slick packed-down snow/ice blanketing most of the road surface, with a few patches of pure slush and a couple blobs of open pavement peeking out like potholes. so, on my four-block walk from my house to the church/school where i taught ESL on monday morning, it was entirely possible to use my boots like ice-skates and slide almost the whole way on that slick layer of dirty white frozenness. and since sidewalk shoveling is not enforced in front of every house...the most dependable option really is to skate down the middle of the road to get to school and back.

of course, i won't be skating to school today or tomorrow, because everything's closed. we're supposed to get another foot or so today, and then it'll be another day or so before it's safe and 'passable' enough for everybody to come out from our snow-cocoons.

and the snowflakes keep falling...

year.glass.half.full.

it is almost exactly the halfway point of my year of service in Camden, and my cup has already been filled to overflowing, more times than i can count. all i can do is name a few grains from the hourglass of this year's passing, a few drops from the River Grateful:

- St. Clare House, where i live with three other Franciscan Volunteer Ministers (FVMs), now has a prayer room! with sage green walls we painted ourselves, cheap gray carpet we installed ourselves, a comfy couch from craigslist, a bunch of pillows from Goodwill for sitting on the floor, a small table populated with candles we've been given, a space heater we were given by someone at church who had an extra, a zen garden populated with rocks from the recent demolition of the most hazardous house in our neighborhood, a little lamp, a framed picture of Jesus laughing, and a frame containing four watercolor pictures created by each one of us FVMs. it is already a life-giving space for us and it is exciting to think of how it will be a blessing to future volunteers, too.

- Francis House continues to be a haven. a family. a breath of fresh air. a healing prayer. a place where we remember, in the (slightly modified) words of India Arie, that the worst disease in the world is not cancer, it's not AIDS; the worst disease in the world is fear and hate, and the cure is love. and love certainly lives here. it is a place where those whose lives have been unalterably affected by HIV and AIDS come and are invited to experience that healing love and spread it to others. and they definitely spread it to me, every day i walk in the door to spend time there.

- i already know the names of all my new students in both the morning and evening ESL classes, which just started a new term this month. so far, they seem to understand when i communicate in Spanish, and they seem to be growing in understanding and confidence of how to communicate in English, and they even seem to enjoy the comic relief of when i get mixed up and things come out in Spanglish :)

- the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd graders still ask me if they can sing the songs i taught them for the Advent Pageant and for Martin Luther King Day. some of them swarm me when i enter their classrooms on Friday mornings, and some of them are constantly complaining that someone else is talking, and some of them ask to go to the bathroom every five minutes, and some of them burst into renditions of "we will, we will, rock you" whenever i have them start tapping or clapping a beat, and yet all of them have memorized how to sing "hello" in eight different languages and seem to proudly raise their voices as we start each class with this greeting to "all the children of the world!"

- i now have a chance to call upon my choral/vocal experience in order to lead breathing exercises, high sighs and sirens, and other warmups with the new choir for middle schoolers, as i assist a fellow FVM in directing them on Wednesday afternoons. we have started off our repertoire with a favorite of mine, "Siyahamba/we are marching in the light of God", and they seem to be rolling with the syncopation pretty well and even shaping their phrases a little bit. watch out, Chanticleer.

- the Camden Peace Art Project has been re-visioned by another fellow FVM and myself to integrate music and peacebuilding activities along with the primary focus on art skills and projects. AND, we have received several generous gifts and an important grant that is enabling us with not only the resources but the essential element of hope that we need in order to continue offering this biweekly after-school program for the children of this city.

- last week was Christian Unity Week in Camden, organized by CCOP. the kick-off was on Martin Luther King Day, with a workshop series throughout the day at St. Anthony's, all about community organizing, because that's what Dr. King did so phenomenally and got in trouble for, not just community service, not painting walls or picking up trash or serving in a soup kitchen, as helpful and necessary as those things may be. each evening there was a worship gathering at a different church around the city, and a different pastor/priest/preacher delivered the 'word', and different community members read the scriptures and prayed the prayers and made the announcements. BUT, the same choir, the Camden Christian Unity Choir, led the music every night. and i was in it. :) we sang mostly some contemporary gospel standards, but they also invited me to teach them a couple of songs in Spanish. claro que si, cantamos "alabare, alabare, alabare, alabare, alabare a mi Senor!"

Monday night at Camden Bible Tabernacle

Wednesday night at St. Bartholomew's Roman Catholic church

St. Bart's

Thursday night at Faith Tabernacle Church

Friday night at Antioch Baptist Church

nativity.creativity.

the other night, after a time of prayer together, my housemates and i got our creative hats and economical slippers on and cut shapes out of paint color-chips to craft some cards for the people we are connected to here in camden, and here is a glimpse of a few of them. some of them express something about our personal connection with that person, and some of them express my prayer for all of you and all of the world: PEACE.

franciscan.home.makeover.

as part of our commitment to living in community for this year, we are jointly responsible for the general upkeep of the house we have been given. we have a monthly budget that we can divide however we need, to pay for food, gas, some community activities, and necessities for the car and house. one of my housemates in particular has a passion for tackling home improvement projects - and this house needs a lot of them! another housemate has a keen eye for aesthetics, so with those forces combined, using some of our free days and hours, we've been able to accomplish a lot. so far, we have:

- soaked and wiped down all the window blinds and fan blades from around the house to remove years of dust build-up

- stripped the grimy flowered wallpaper off the top half of the kitchen walls

- spackled, sanded, and painted those walls a beautiful, bright, clean white

- peeled the multiple-patterned adhesive layers off of the chlorine-blue faux-tile that is tacked all over the bottom half of the kitchen walls [we have yet to clean those and paint a deep, dusky purple over them]

- spackled and primed the scuffed-up, off-white walls of the dining room

- painted the dining room walls a warm, delicious pumpkiny color called 'falling leaves'

- stuffed steel wool into gaps around the lower edge of the house so that mice can't get in

- spackled the back bedroom and painted over its former shade of 'suave mauve' to a rich, dark-chocolaty hue called 'moroccan henna'

- repeatedly dumped Dran-o down the shower drain to solve our water-staying-in-the-tub problems [currently trying 'El Diablo', some professional drain-unclogging concoction i was handed from the back room of Cartun's, our local hardware store]

- patched up some places in the living room where the wallpaper with the creamy buttery yellow paint over it was peeling away from the wall

- rearranged the living room into a much more inviting setup, and mounted some lovely artwork on the walls

next up:

- cleaning and painting the bottom half of the kitchen

- converting our current storage/recycling room into a nice reading/prayer room

- painting the middle bedroom so that its occupant doesn't have to stare up at neon green all night and look around at uneven white walls all the time

- who knows what we'll come up with after that!

bird.friends.

sing.hello.to.miss.anna.

thirty little voices chime each friday morning as i enter the classroom, "good morning, miss anna!" and we gather in a circle and sing hello to each child in 2nd and 3rd grade as we start music class. next door, in 1st grade, art class is just getting under way, under the guidance of my roommate and fellow Franciscan volunteer. in an hour we will switch classrooms, in an effort to provide every child at St. Anthony's School with weekly opportunities to exercise and develop their skills of creativity and appreciation for art and music.

this is a new, surprising, and surprisingly enjoyable part of my volunteer work now. the other volunteers and i have been meeting regularly with the school principal since the year began, to see when we might start coming into the classrooms, but because of the chaos of new leadership at the school, and a new federally-funded lunch program with mounds of paperwork and logistics to handle, these fine arts classes were simply not a priority. so finally, about five weeks ago, we were able to set up a schedule and start teaching. my roommate teaches all of the art classes, K-8; another Franciscan volunteer, who actually majored in music education, teaches kindergarten and grades 4-8, because those classes take place on Wednesdays, when i am teaching ESL, so i just take over on Fridays.

i'm still trying to learn every child's name; trying to help them remember that one finger means we're using our singing voices, two fingers means we're using our speaking voices, three fingersmeans we're using our whispering voices, and no fingers means we're using our listening (i.e. silent!) voices; and now trying to help them learn their parts for the Advent pageant which is taking place in less than two weeks!

"I, said the donkey, shaggy and brown..." - 1st grade is singing The Friendly Beasts. and the 2nd-3rd grade is performing a rhythmic chant about the journey of Mary and Joseph and their search for a place to stay in Bethlehem.

speaking of a place to stay - this weekend i've been staying with some family friends in Pennsylvania, the first time i've been able to get away and spend quality time with people i know outside of FVM since August. i'm so thankful for their hospitality, which included seeing the movies Gran Torino and Precious [both highly recommended...for open minds and compassionate hearts] and also the opportunity to attend their church this morning, on this first Sunday of Advent. it was refreshing and spirit-encouraging to be able to join my voice in full-bodied harmony with a close-knit, cross-cultural and cross-generational sanctuary-full of people. singing O Come O Come Emmanuel; singing hello and love to God, and peace to each other and the world.

in the coming weeks, may we all find our ways to sing hello, love, and peace to each other, whether with our mouths, our thoughts, or our actions. may we recognize and celebrate the ways we do see light bursting into darkness; love overcoming fear; our eyes opening to see Christ in every face we encounter. may we pray for homeless or hurting hearts finding safe places to stay and be cared for, and may we be willing to be part of that caring however we can. most of all, may we invite the God who Is Peace to sing God's own hello, love, and peace deep inside of us, so that we cannot help but be a loudspeaker for that music of abundant life.