2016

I noticed her incredible smile my first day of work in 1993.  We were the only two 20-somethings in the small office in Washington DC.   From first glance we couldn’t have been more different – me new to town an over eager political science grad looking to work my way up; her an actor paying the bills by working as a receptionist.  Until that night having beers at Trio it was an office friendship.   She exuded creative energy and I was fascinated by, what seemed to me, her alternative path – a college graduate auditioning in the theater scene with the plan of becoming an equity actor.   She was immensely committed to her craft.

I got swept up in her group of eclectic friends: young actors, directors, stage managers.  We spent free time in various venues, many of which rattled my limited sense of theater.  Seeking art and amusement, she introduced me to places in the city I would have never ventured, cue the room full of naked actors performing five feet from my face.

When she wanted to start a female centered theater company, I availed myself of anything I could do to be involved.   She embodied feminism in art in action.   I reviewed scripts, served on the board, built sets.  We spent long nights in bars and apartments drinking, smoking, and dreaming.   She made me feel cool, edgy, and profound.

Eventually my ambitions took me away from DC.  We kept in touch by email and I followed her choices with awe and wonder.  She pursued her passions in an unencumbered way.   After suffering for years from food sensitivities, she got a graduate degree and started her own nutrition consulting business.  She still acted and when I was pregnant with my first child, I drove from Milwaukee to Green Bay to see her perform for what be my last time seeing her onstage.  Then she was an herbalist and sold her potions – beard oils and body balms – to loyal customers.  She later became a yoga instructor and took up acroyoga.  It seemed so fitting that the pictures I would see made me think she had run away with the circus.  I lived vicariously through her spirit always wondering what was next.

I hadn’t seen her in 10 years when she was murdered by a stranger.   She never showed up to Christmas dinner holding her famous brussels sprouts.   I worried and waited and then the worst was confirmed.  A month later, at yoga for the first time in 15 years, I found myself weeping for her cruel death but also reveling in her good life and the inspiration she left for me to do the things I love.

~Keri Frisch

In the 1980’s and 90’s, Medellin, Colombia, of drug lord Pablo Escobar fame, was known as the most dangerous city in the world; it was not uncommon to see someone running down the street with a police officer’s hat in hand — proof the cop was dead — on his way to retrieve the blood reward money. Today Medellin is a different city, safe to live in, safe to visit. In 2013 it won the Most Innovative City award, beating out cities like Tel Aviv and San Francisco.

The transformation of Medellín has been very much on my mind and heart. As a Baltimorean, I yearn and ache for the healing and transformation of our own city. As we become more deeply engaged in Baltimore and are in relationship with fellow Baltimoreans from other parts of town, what used to be “news” and statistics has become more personal, hitting closer to home. Earlier this week, I learned a member of our BUILD family’s grandson was murdered, shot in the head, in west Baltimore; his name was Markell, and he was 16 years old. I will be attending his wake this Sunday afternoon, after the concert benefitting Turnaround Tuesday, and his funeral on Monday, along with other folks from Redeemer, in support of our BUILD sister. Please pray for her, her name is Dorothy (Dottie).

Hitting midlife has been helpful in refocusing and clarifying priorities. Comfort over fashion, for example; done over perfect, another. I wore socks with a certain pair of shoes to the airport on Monday, en route to a college visit with Grace that, in days gone by, I would never have been caught wearing out in public (Grace concurred they were a huge fashion faux-pas) but guess what? I really didn’t care! Wahoo, I was comfortable!

I figure, if I’m lucky, I have another 30-40’ish years to live as a human being on this planet. It’s important to me to care for my family and friends. It’s important to me to care for my church family. And it’s important to me to care for my Baltimore family, a family that just keeps getting bigger and bigger, thanks to BUILD and our other community partners.

The transformation of Medellín, Colombia was not rocket science, nor was it a miracle: “The local government, along with businesses, community organizations, and universities worked together to fight violence and modernize Medellin … Transportation projects are financed through public-private partnerships; engineering firms have designed public buildings for free; and in 2006, nine of the city’s largest firms funded a science museum.” http://www.occupy.com/article/metamorphosis-medellin-once-most-dangerous-now-most-innovative-city#sthash.5zMyfsqm.mYmyH0AO.dpbs

Please pray for Dottie and for all our Baltimore family. And together, let’s act with God’s grace to heal and transform our own city, our own home, neighborhood by neighborhood, with BUILD and other effective community partners. The “tragedy of Baltimore” as David preached last Sunday will be if we allow ourselves to become paralyzed by the enormity of what needs to be done and succumb to inaction.

God has something else in mind for us.

Cristina

Dear Folks,

I’ve spent the week reading and re-reading an article written by Baltimore resident Alec MacGillis titled “The Tragedy of Baltimore.”  MacGillis has skin in the game.  He’s lived in the city for 11 of the last 18 years.  He and his wife are raising their children here, sending them to public schools.  They are members of a church, volunteer at several organizations, coach little league.  So his frank description of what doesn’t work—the “unvarnished truth” as a member of our Bible study called it—gathers legitimacy in its telling.  His article, which will appear in the NY Times magazine this Sunday, is more a diagnosis than a criticism, although he’s clearly critical of the mismanagement which has characterized Baltimore policing for years.

His goal is not to cast blame, however, nor is he looking for a quick fix or a magic potion.  His work is a sobering, honest inventory of our problems with public safety, from a person who admits the solution will only come from those who are invested in the struggle.  Deep in the article he writes, “Whatever path there was to be found out of the city’s chaos, its residents were going to have to find it themselves.”

MacGillis concludes in this way: “The meeting (with new police commissioner Michael Harrison) was standing room only. ‘We just want to feel safe, period,’ Monique Washington, president of the Edmondson Village Community Association, told Harrison. ‘Our people are in fear, and we’re tired.’

An hour into the forum, a neighborhood resident named Renee McCray stepped up to the microphone. She described how bewildering it had been to accompany a friend downtown, near the tourist-friendly Inner Harbor, one night a few months earlier. ‘The lighting was so bright. People had scooters. They had bikes. They had babies in strollers. And I said: ‘What city is this? This is not Baltimore City.’ Because if you go up to Martin Luther King Boulevard’ — the demarcation between downtown and the west side — ‘we’re all bolted in our homes, we’re locked down.’ She paused for a moment to deliver her point. ‘All any of us want is equal protection,’ she said.

It was a striking echo of the language in the Department of Justice report and the activists’ condemnations of the police following (Freddie) Gray’s death. Back then, the claims were of overly aggressive policing; now residents were pleading for police officers to get out of their cars, to earn their pay — to protect them.

You could look at this evolution as demonstrating an irreconcilable conflict, a tension between (residents and authorities) never to be resolved. But the residents streaming into these sessions with Harrison weren’t suggesting that. They were not describing a trade-off between justice and order. They saw them as two parts of a whole and were daring to ask for both.”

I commend “The Tragedy of Baltimore” to you, because we have skin in the game, too.

Most of us are committed individually to “healing the human family” in Baltimore, in the words of our website.  We drink at the nourishing well of Redeemer—we’re fed by liturgy and music, classes and small groups, prayer and silence and fellowship—and we go out from this place to feed others within the circles of our influence of family and work or service.  But the wrenching context of Baltimore, the timing of MacGillis’s article, the growth of Redeemer over the past four years, and our transition now of saying good-bye to Caroline and soon welcoming two new clergy associates, calls us to consider a further step.  How can Redeemer as a whole, with our extraordinary resources of growing membership and all the ways we are invested in Baltimore City and Baltimore County, along with the leverage of the Covenant Fund (currently valued at $1.8 million), address one or more of the root causes of our “tragedy” and make a measurable difference?

I will ask the vestry to begin this process at our meeting next week.  We’ll use our retreat in the early Fall to deepen our discernment as we bring our new clergy on board.  And we’ll gather the parish in small groups between now and then to include the widest possible number of voices.  Out of these discussions will come Redeemer’s mission for the next decade: a renewed commitment to the compassion and justice of Jesus that is fit for our time and context.  If we listen well and respond to the Spirit with courage, we and the city we love will be transformed.

Love, David

No one asks questions quite like a child does.  I sometimes think their relentless questioning is one reason why it can be downright scary to volunteer to be a Sunday School leader.  I remind my leaders that they are not required to have all the answers.  It is perfectly okay to say, “That’s a good question.  I don’t know the answer, but I am glad that we are here at church looking for the answer together.”  My leaders have even been reported looking for clergy after church with their students to ask them what they think about a question that came up in class that day.

I keep a book on my desk that I pick up from time to time called “Will Our Children Have Faith?”  Written by Rev. Dr. John H. Westerhoff III, I admit that I was drawn to it by the wonderful questioning title.  Will they have faith?  And equally important to me is what can we do as adults to help them?  According to Westerhoff, “To be Christian is to ask:  What can I bring to another?  Not:  What do I want that person to know or be?  It means being open to learn from another person (even a child) as well as to share one’s understandings and ways.”

This last Sunday because of the special Jazz Mass instead of our usual Sunday morning programming, I led a story time with the children during the readings and sermon.  To help me when I plan these occasional gatherings, I have found good resources that lead me to children’s books that are not necessarily religious or that tell Bible stories but still communicate ideas from the readings for the day.  I have discovered some wonderful books written for children that have unexpectedly helped me to see complex ideas much more clearly.  Preparing for this Transfiguration Sunday when Peter, James and John see Jesus in a way they never have before, I came across “They All Saw a Cat” by Brendan Wenzel.  Wenzel introduces us to a cat and then proceeds to illustrate for the reader how different creatures perceive the cat.  The dog sees a scared cat while the mouse sees a scary cat.  The child sees a soft cat to pet while the fox sees dinner.  The fish sees the cat magnified as it looks up at it through the water while the bird has an overhead view.  The bee, bat and snake with their eyes that work so differently from ours see the cat in a much different way.  And then there is the page that shows the cat as an integration of all the different viewpoints of all these varied creatures.  To really see the cat is to take all the points of view into account.  And of course, the reader is also asked to consider how the cat sees itself when it looks into the water.

From this simple children’s book, I finally understood why I find myself growing so much in my faith since I came to Redeemer.   It is because of all of you.  From the sermons to the offerings from my classmates in Wednesday morning Rector’s Bible Study to the conversations that I have when we stop to chat in the halls to what the children offer up when we are here learning together, those different perspectives come together to help me see.   David said in his sermon last Sunday our lives are transfigured when we rise and die together.  To that I would add and when we ask questions together.   I hope to see you here during this season of Lent.  What a perfect time to be in community and continue, young and old, to work out what it means to be a Christian together.

~Kathy LaPlant