Recognition of Romero

Here is what La Prensa Latina wrote about Romero:

El Salvador Remembers Romero 25 Years After His Assassination

San Salvador, Mar 30 (Prensa Latina) In a religious conference on late Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero, who was assassinated on 24 March 1980, San Salvador´s Assistant Bishop Gregorio Rosa Chavez said the example of Romero, who helped the poor, should be followed to resolve the current domestic problems.

Gregorio Rosa Chavez stated the Salvadorian people were disheartened because their society was dispersed and access to information was limited.

“Arnulfo Romero embodies national identity and the poor peoples” struggle for human rights,” asserted Rosa before hundreds of students and religious groups.

The Assistant Bishop believed El Salvador needed persons like Romero, who was a universal light.

On the death of Romero, Mexican theologian Elsa Tamez recalled many regimes that massacred religious people and farmers in Chile, Colombia, Bolivia, Guatemala, Argentina, El Salvador and other Latin American countries.

The Salvadorian Peoples” Social Bloc informed it would hold an ecumenical worship and a cultural-political activity on April 2 to honor Arnulfo Romero.

Arnulfo Romero, symbol for the people during the 12-year civil war, was murdered on an order from the leader of the Nationalist Republic Alliance Party and the local and foreign oligarchy.

In 1993, the UN-created Truth Commission concluded that late army Major Roberto D Aubuisson masterminded the assassination of Romero.

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Reading the article there is only one thing that I disagree with. The author writes that Romero embodied national identity. I admit as a Salvadoran American I am proud that Romero was a Salvadoran, but I don’t believe that he embodied national identity, rather he embodied the identity of the Kingdom of God. If he embodied national identity there would be no martyr know as Romero.

I am surprised that they included Aubuisson as the mastermind. Hope this recognition that ARENA’s founder commanded that Romero be assisnated will lead to more being brought out into the light. That was not the only thing that was ordered from the top.

What is the Gospel?

This is the question I need to answer in the next big paper I got to write.
I have appreciated my time here at Regent where we are being challenged to think seriously about this.
This will be the question that will be turning in my head for the next couple weeks as I try to produce a good piece of writing for my class and honestly wrestle with this question.

Strange when your hometown makes it into the news.

Check out this article The Most Dangerous Gang in America.
This article talks about how Northern VA is a hotbed for gang activity. There is an incident where a gang member hacked off another kids fingers with a machete. What is crazy is that my mom knew the attacker because she works in the school system as a translator. This article makes NOVA seem like a war zone with fighting gang memebers. I am not there anymore, but the situation is not as cut and dry as it makes it seem. It makes me sad that only way El Salvador and Salvadorians makes it into the news is because of the violence. Even up here in Vancouver people know about MS. However we don’t hear stories of hope in the media. We don’t see support for the day laborers who break their backs cleaning, building, lawn mowing there way through life. Well I got to tell you there are some Salvadorians that should be in the media. My sister just got a job at the United Way trying to develop “best practices models” for social work around the nation. One guy you should know about is Raph, a studious Salvadoran who gave up going to DC United to study in college. Ponete las pilas, hermano. You got my little mother daily saving lives in an elementary school just being present for these little kids and their families. Not all truchos are violent.

Another thought, maybe this violence on the streets of the US is the manifestation of the things they taught the para-military groups in the eighties returing to their backyard? One time I was talking to this homeless Salvadoran guy. He said that before the war there were no gangs in El Salvador. Then the nation was hit with war and brutal military tactics. The people fled to the US to urban slums where they attended the “Universities of Crime” and then were deported back to El Salvador and started gangs.

Also, I think Tony Saca’s plan and the FBI plan of the heavy hand is not the solution. This messed up system of economics where the poor remain poor has got to be changed. The poor sending their family memebers to the US has got to change too. The millions of dollars coming in daily has got to stop being used up in a consumerist culture. We got malls that would shame the best malls in the US and they haven’t brought anything to El Salvador.

So what? Well I don’t know. I am just spouting out some ideas. It is late at night and I am frustrated with the negative media Salvadorans always get. Why is it that Latin@s get into the limelight through violence and drugs? I am glad we have got some prophetic voices out there in Latin America. You guys keep shouting.

Lisa and I are going to El Salvador in July. I am excited to talk to people down ther and see what is really going on and see how things are going down there. I am excited because we will spend time with Habitat for Humanity and church in San Salvador that is making a difference down there. Hope to relay some stories of hope.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

I have been working on a term paper for MLK. I have been so impressed by his life and legacy. Here are words from the last sermon he gave before his assassination:

If any of you are around when I have to meet my day, I don’t want a long funeral . . . I’d like somebody to mention that day, that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to give his life serving others. I’d like for somebody to say that day, that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to love somebody. I want you to say that day, that I tried to be right on the war question. I want you to be able to say that day, that I did try to feed the hungry. And I want you to be able to say that day, that I did try, in my life, to clothe those who were naked. I want you to say, on that day, that I did try, in my life, to visit those who were in prison. I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity.

Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice; say that I was a drum major for peace; I was a drum major for righteousness. And all the other shallower things will not matter. I won’t have any money to leave behind. I won’t have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a committed life behind.

There were some serious character flaws, but I think Peter Gibson gives a good refute to those that would want to discredit MLK:

One student asked me whether we should still look up to Martin Luther King Jr., knowing, as we do now, that as a Christian minister he was unfaithful to his wife. As I travel around the country talking to students about heroes, this question comes up all the time.

In an information age, our knowledge of the intimate life makes it hard to have heroes . . . But we need to avoid defining heroes only by their flaws . . . Could just anyone have delivered the “I Have a Dream” speech? How many people could have stood on the bombed-out porch of their home and said, “We must meet hate with love”?

Without King’s vision, the South might have erupted in a violent race war. Without his leadership, we might not have achieved one of the single accomplishments of the 20th century – the one we celebrate today – the widespread belief in racial equality and nonviolent social change

by Peter H. Gibson, in Philadelphia Inquirer “A hero in a country that asks too much”

Excellent Poem

In class last week Loren read Seven Stanzas at Easter. Here is a little taste:

Seven Stanzas at Easter
By John Updike

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

_______
Check out the rest of the poem. It is excellent.

Christ Has Risen

Here is a link where you can find “Christ has Risen in different languages.

Arabic
AL MASEEH QAM! HAQQAN QAM!
OR: El Messieh Kahm! Kakken Kahm!
OR: El Mshi kam! Bel hakkan kam!
OR: Al Maset’h ahm! Hat’em ahm!
OR: Al Massiah qam! Haqqan qam!
OR: Al Mesiech Kam! Hakan Kam!

Spanish
Cristo ha resucitado! Verdaderamente ha resucitado!
OR: Cristo ha resucitado. En verdad ha resucitado.
Spanish (Baskian): Cristo berbistua! Benatan berbistua!
Spanish (Castilan): Crist ha ressuscitat! En veritat ha ressuscitatado!

We had a wonderful Easter Sunday. We went to a sunrise service overlooking the mountains and English Bay (I think?) at Vanier Park. We sang and Rev. Jeremy shared a good word. We got to see a bald eagle, ducks, sea gulls, a hawk and crows fly around. At one point when Jeremy was preaching a duck flew on top of a building and started quacking away. Jeremy said, “If St. Francis was here the duck would be preaching too.”

What a great day! It is 1 PM and we have had two meals and two Easter services. It is a good day.

The Way of the Lord by N.T. Wright

I have really enjoyed this book.
If you haven’t read this book, I think you should read it before Easter Sunday. Here is a quote from one of the last chapters.

Those who find the way from the empty tomb discover that it, too, is
the pilgrim way: that, having gone to the cneter of the earth, to the city where God’s love and the world’s pain met together, they are sent off as inside-out pilgrims, to discover God at work in the wider world, to recognize the face of Jesus in the faces of the poor, the prisoners, the dying, the debt-ridden, those without dignity and without hope, and as pilgrims to worship Jesus there by bringing his healing love wherever they go. With Calvary and Easter, the Holy Land has become the holy person, Jesus himself, who goes ahead of us into all the world, to the places of pain and despair, and summons us to follow him and work for reconciliation and hope. (117)

Today we heard Bob Eckblad from Nueva Tierra in Washington. He gave an excellent talk on his experience as a pastor and how he experienced the work of the Holy Spirit. I appreciated his humbleness and his openess. He had some great things to share with us.

Shutting down the Border

James C. McKinley Jr.
Writes about the border talks with George W. Bush, Vicente Fox of Mexico and Paul Martin of Canada. He says the following:

Last week, in a sharp divergence from Washington, he publicly decried a measure passed in the House of Representatives that would mandate the completion of a long-stalled security wall between Tijuana, Mexico, and San Diego.

Far from being completed, [Vicente Fox]said, the wall should be knocked down.

“No country that is proud of itself should construct walls,” he told reporters in Mexico City on March 15. “No one can isolate oneself these days with a wall.”

He and other proponents of immigration reform and the guest-worker program argue that higher walls and tighter controls will do more harm than good, by forcing more migrants to take illegal routes, and thus making it easier for terrorists to cross illegally as well.

But opponents, like Representative Tom Tancredo, a conservative Colorado Republican, say a guest-worker program makes no sense unless there is already a tight border.

I agree with Vicente, but there are no easy answers that I can give. One of my friends said he was tired of the hypocrisy of the wealthy that hire maids, nannys, construction workers that do not have legal papers and then raise their voices to close down the borders. Also this idea that drugs and terrorist infiltrating the country is understandable, but I think they are going about it all wrong. People are looking for a way of life. Start with a better foreign policy and these problems will not be as bad. This missionary came to speak to my class a few weeks ago and he said (paraphrase) “If you start humanitarian aid in the poor countries you will diffuse the radical Muslims.” I don’t have answers, but I don’t think building a wall will help. Most of the people, that I know, are crossing the border to reunite with family and work to support their family in their native countries. The terror that they experience from hunger and joblessness is what they are fighting. This neoliberal economics is what is siphoning the wealth away from the poor countries and leaving the poor person poorer and the rich richer.

Para mi gente

I can’t believe it! Today I just found out that I won the Vice President of External Relations for the Regent College Student Association. Here is the bio I placed in the
Ect. 3/22 Issue. Also there is an interesting article by an Alum you should read if you are interested in seeing what is going on here at Regent.

La idea de Post-Christendom

Sergio, voy a tratar de escribir en mi spanglish mis pensamientos sobre Post-Christendom (?Que es la palabra para Christendom en espanol?).

La iglesia occidental esta perdiendo la potencia que tenia en los siglos antes. Cristianidad ha cambiado en el Occidente, ya no son la fuerza dominante en la cultura. Los modelos de iglesia ya no son estables y la iglesia dejo de ser el centro de buenos y servicos para el pueblo. Antes la iglesia era un fuente de cultura, arte, musica, missiones en el Occidente. Todo ha cambiado por bueno o mal. Antes el Occidente mandaba la mayoria de missioneros pero ha cambiado hoy. En Latinoamerica la iglesia esta creciendo 3.000 personas por hora! Solo en Nigeria hay mas Anglicanos en la iglesia los domingos que en el Reino Unido, EEUU, Australia, y Canada. In the West, the church used to be one of the largest and most influential institutions in Western culture, but they no longer enjoy the friendship they once had. Puedes leer el libro de Philip Jenkins,The Next Christendom. He writes about how he heart of Christianity is moving to the global south – to Asia, Africa, Latin America. This is of the biggest shifts of our life time.

Por eso en clase estamos estudiano lo que Dios en el poder del Espiritu Santo esta haciendo en las iglesias del Occidental. Estamos mirado diferentes formas de iglesia y pensando en la postura de cristianos en este cambio cultural.
?Que opinas?