The View from Bolton Street
Community Conversation - October 17 @ 6:30 pm
Sharing Our Truth
Community Conversation
October 17th
6:30-8:30 pm
On Wednesday, October 17, please join us for dinner and community conversation, led by seminarian Jill Williams. Dinner will be from 6:30-7:00, after which we will create a safe space to share and listen to each other’s stories. To honor feelings surrounding our recent national events, our time will center around the theme of sexual trauma and how we can share our experiences, listen to each other, and hold our suffering together. There will be time for prayer and reflection also. Please come to speak your truth and/or to be a compassionate listener. Both roles are important for healing. This event is for adults (18+) only. Please contact Jill at jillwilliams1904@yahoo.com with any questions, concerns, or needs for reassurance.
The View from Bolton Street
The View from Bolton Street
This week in the Gospel Jesus puts his foot down. There is no real other way to read Jesus’ words in Mark about Divorce other than as a strict condemnation: “He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.” Jesus acknowledges to the Pharisees that Moses does allow for divorce, but only because of the hardness of our own hearts; but that God - once he has put two people together - does not like to see them pulled apart.
This is a tough reading in 2018. For Christians of all stripes. For more conservative Christians who attempt to take too literally readings on the sanctity of life and the validity of homosexual relationships, they will quickly turn the page when confronted with Jesus’ teachings on divorce. We all know a thrice divorced born again Christian who blames ‘the gays’ for ruining the world, don’t we?
But it is also a tough reading for more liberal or progressive Christians. In a #MeToo era where women are finally able to come forward about abuse - physical, sexual and emotional - the voice of Jesus saying ‘if you divorce your husband/wife you commit adultery’ seems out of character. And we too, perhaps, desire to ‘flip the page’ quickly and move on to other things.
But Jesus is quite adamant here. The breaking of the bonds of marriage is sinful. AND IS BORNE BY MALE AND FEMALE ALIKE. Now, to understand this you have to step back a bit in time. Because 1st century marriages were not like 21st century marriages. In fact we wouldn’t recognize them as marriages at all. In the first century, women were treated functionally like property. A woman rarely had a say in whom she married at all, and if a man found any reason to dislike her (she wasn’t attractive enough, couldn’t bear enough children, wasn’t healthy enough, couldn’t cook) he could petition for a divorce and suddenly she was an ‘unclean’ woman. Not suitable for marriage to anyone else, presumed unfaithful and, if she was lucky, left to work in her family’s home the rest of her life. The ‘sin’ of divorce only went one way. It was always the woman’s fault - no matter what the man did.
And in THAT context Jesus stands up and says FIRST that a man who divorces his wife is guilty of adultery. HE is guilty FIRST. As the main arbiter of power, after all, it is/was incumbent on the man to maintain and preserve the relationship; and they failed, and so bear the burden of the sin. This was Jesus calling for a 1st century #MeToo movement.
Now here in the 21st century we are facing a different kind of challenge regarding sexual ethics - but we can approach it with the same question. Perhaps today the Pharisees would ask ‘Should not a woman prove she was assaulted? Raped? Abused? For that is what the law requires?’
And perhaps Jesus would respond - ‘only because of your hardness of hearts is the burden of proof put on the accused. Only because of a system built by men of privilege and power are those with the most to lose asked to risk the most to obtain Justice.’ Indeed in the 1980s, 90s, and even today — the only person ‘guilty’ of adultery if you drank too much, stayed out too late, or wore the wrong clothing, was the woman. The men were just ‘doing what men do’. ‘Boys will be Boys’. But Jesus’ message continues to resonate today — that the sin of adultery whether in marriage, after a first date, at an all-night-kegger, or a Church function – is borne first by those with the most power, authority, and control. And so too the responsibility: to treat people respectfully, to ensure a safe environment for the most unsure, and to be prudent, judicious and honest when accusations of harassment and abuse arise.
The #MeToo moment IS a challenging moment for the Church, because it requires us to ensure that the Church is a safe space not only for previous victims of abuse, but also a space that can be kept as free from abuse as possible AND that commits to responding honestly, appropriately and fully to reports of abuse when (not if) they happen. Jesus offers us a good model in the gospel today - to put the onus on those with the most power to recognize their collective responsibility for that work - and a model we can strive to enact every day.
Anti-violence walk with Councilman Costello - Monday October 8
Next Monday, October 8, at 6:00 pm Councilman Costello, city officials, and concerned members of the community will be meeting at the Shake & Bake Family Fun Center, 1601 Pennsylvania Ave., for an anti-violence walk through the neighborhood. The plan is for the various officials to address the assembly at 6:00, then walk together to Penn North where there will be a moment of silence and prayer. Following the prayer(s) the group will walk back down to the Social Arts club.
Full, and quite possibly more accuate, details will be available at Councilman Costello’s facebook page later this evening. You can go directly there via this link.
BUILD - Kirwan Commission training at Brown Memorial
Are you aware that there is a commission that is developing recommendations that could result in the biggest change in education policy and funding across the state in a generation?
On October 7 at 12:30, BUILD and Brown Memorial Presbyterian will be hosting a training on the essential work being done by The Commission on Innovation and Excellence in Education, also known as “the Kirwan Commission.” The Kirwan Commission was created to make recommendations that will prepare Maryland students “to meet the challenges of a changing global economy, to meet the State’s workforce needs, to be prepared for postsecondary education and the workforce, and to be successful citizens in the 21st century.”
This is a huge opportunity for Baltimore city, where 96% of our schools experience concentrated poverty. Please join us in the sanctuary (1316 Park Avenue) after church to learn more about the Kirwan Commission and what we can do to help get its policy and funding recommendations passed by the legislature. Now is our chance to finally give our schools appropriate funding over the next decade and more. RSVP by Tuesday October 2nd to Rebecca Crew at rahcrew@gmail.com.
As you may notice - the deadline to RSVP was yesterday. All are still welcome, but there will not be lunch for anyone who has not already RSVPd - so, please eat your fill at coffee hour here at Memorial (or at least, take the edge off) before heading across the street.
Liturgy and Living - October 7, 2018
How Do We Respond To Violence? Baltimore Ceasefire
Please join us after Church this Sunday as we hear from Baltimore Ceasefire - a community led effort to reduce and end violence on Baltimore streets. After the 19 murders last week this is ESPECIALLY important as we find positive ways to channel our concerns and worries about violence here in Baltimore. If you attend you will learn what Baltimore Ceasefire is, how it works, how you can be involved and ESPECIALLY why it is important that you participate in the community walk on Monday Oct 8th at 6 pm on Penn Ave.
Bingo night - volunteers needed
"Bingo Night is this Friday! Prize baskets are good to go (see the sample basket below - quite the prize pack) and we’re gearing up in Farnham Hall. However! We need to keep selling tickets - tell your friends, tell your family, tell people you just met on the street! Tickets can be ordered on Eventbrite - and there is a pre-purchase discount in effect - $10 for the first ticket (with 8 game cards and a slice of pizza) and then the normal price of $10 for each additional ticket (also with 8 game boards and a slice of pizza).
Additional 8 card game books can be purchased for $10 each in order to increase your chances of winning the 8 game prizes. Each book has 8 game cards with 4 bingo squares on the sheet (see below)
Make sure to bring cash because we have 2 special games! Each special game will be played on a single game card that can be purchased for $10 each. Special event bingo game cards have only one Bingo square. Coach Purse is a blue game card, Amazon Kindle Fire 8HD is a red game card. See below for more clarification!
We will also be having a 50/50 raffle, Bake Sale, and a game called BLINGO so make sure you have cash! I can also take Venmo and Paypal if needed.
Remember all proceeds will go back to our local schools and our own youth programming, so be generous.
We are also in need of volunteers to help with staffing the event. If you would like to help, or you are just planning to be here anyway, please go to the sign-up genius page here."
Sample Prize Basket - look at all the calories!
8 pack of 4 game cards - each card will be used for one prize basket
Single game card for the special games - $10 cash at the event
The View from Bolton Street
The View From Robert Street
Your Rector is home for the week with a small bout of pneumonia. Please keep him in your prayers and he hopes to be back with you on Sunday
The popular television show ‘Friday Night Lights’ is set in the small towns of west Texas and looks at life on the football field, the classroom, and the living rooms of small town America in a mostly forgotten part of the world. The oft repeated slogan from the characters is ‘Texas Forever’.
As some of you know last week I had my own ‘Texas forever’ moment - traveling through Midland, to Fort Davis, to Alpine to Marfa and finally down to the desert down in Wilderness near Ruidosa, Texas and the Mexican border. And while I don’t have any plans to abandon Baltimore for the wilds of west Texas - I do have an appreciation for the stark beauty, the remoteness, and the importance of self-reliance that is evoked out in the desert.
After presenting an award in my mother’s name to a housing advocate in Dallas; My brother and his husband and I travelled down to Ruidosa, TX to find a small piece of land my grandfather had purchased in the 1970s. Neither my grandfather, nor my dad, nor my uncles had ever been able to find this land (my mother had told us it may not even be real), but my brother and I thought it would be fun to go find it. That it might help us learn something about our family and maybe bring a little peace as well.
It WAS quite an experience. There is a small set of cabins near a hot spring about a mile from the property where we stayed for the night. We lost cell service about two hours from there. And except for a (Very random) airport/bar/general store with Wi-Fi ten miles away there was no way to communicate with the outside world.
It is amazing how loud silence in the desert can be.
The next morning we were met by an old Texas landowner, Jim, who took us off-roading in his truck to find the land. Armed with a GPS receiver (and our phones which have surprisingly accurate GPS!) we set out mapping out the corners of four small five acre plots. The best piece, my grandfathers, had a long, wide flat piece of land just under a hill with a beautiful view of the Sierra Madre mountains in Mexico. We left a few of my grandfather’s mementos there, to give him a chance to enjoy the view too, and spent a lot of time dreaming about what ‘could be’ on that 20 acre parcel.
It was the first time that Chase and I have spent a lot of time together talking about something other than my mom’s passing in the last year. And the first time, I at least, have allowed myself to really dream. Even if they are idle dreams about a small patch of land I may never see again, it was fun to say ‘Texas Forever’ as I dreamed about Adobe shelters, solar houses and giant water collecting barrels, or at least a ‘No Wall building here’ sign.
There is a lot of negativity in the world right now. And a lot to be angry and upset about. From violence in our city, to unheard of levels of corruption in our national government, to an extended national conversation on sexual harassment that continues to make victims the ones we put on trial. It is hard to see positivity. So I want to encourage you to make space to dream. Dream about where you find yourself called these days. In terms of work, relationships, family, even here at Memorial — make space to Dream. And if that means creating some noisy silence, like we found in the Desert, maybe turn off your cell phone for the day. Or turn off the television and pick up the book. Or even just join us for Bible Study - we have a number of options during the week now.
So that you can dream too. Texas Forever. Baltimore Forever. Memorial forever.
Team ESC at the Baltimore Running Festival
September 24, 2018
Dear people of Memorial,
It has been just about two months since I finished my service year with Episcopal Service Corps and moved out of the Gilead House. What a wonderful year it was! There are so many ways in which I have grown and changed as a result of living in community and serving the students in the Baltimore public school system.
ESC-MD changed my life. It brought me close to God, taught me more about myself, and increased my passion for service. I hope you are aware of how special ESC-MD is and how lucky you are to be able to house the Gileads at Memorial. Having such a wonderful community to be a part of while living in Baltimore meant so much to me. I am so thankful, and now it is time for me to give back to the program that gave me these opportunities. As you all may or may not know, I have signed up to run a 5K as a part of Team ESC-MD in the Baltimore Running Festival! My partner in life, my fiancé Dave, has agreed to join me. We are raising funds for the program that brought me to my call to ministry and has changed the lives of so many young people. We want to make sure ESC-MD has the resources it needs to continue its important work in Baltimore.
Will you help us? Please consider sponsoring Dave and me in our 5K race on October 20th. With your donation, ESC-MD will have the resources for future Gileads to be able to do their work in the city. If you wish to donate, please visit this link: http://www.escmaryland.org/baltimore-running-festival-team/. Click where it says “make your gift” and in the section where it asks which team member you’re supporting, make sure to put my name: Suz Jones-Hochmuth. Anything you can give will be much appreciated! Again, thank you very much for your love and support.
Yours in Christ,
Suz Jones-Hochmuth