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Fall, 2 0 0 6 VOLUME 3, NO. 2 periodic
e-news about spirituality, wellness, and the common good
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Community
News
Longtime Interweaver Elected
Bishop One
Book, One Community, One Month to Go!
Have
you gotten your copy of A Hope in the Unseen yet? Ron Suskind’s book is this year’s
selection for the “One Book, One Community” project in
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An excerpt from Mark Beckwith’s nomination materials:
For the past twenty years, I have been committed to urban ministry. My passion comes from a commitment to identify the city – in its racial, socio-economic and ethnic diversity, as a place of abundance. There has been a tendency to turn our backs on the inner city, primarily because inner cities have long been identified as regions of scarcity. Shortly after I arrived as Rector of All Saints, Worcester, there was a murder in the neighborhood. A drug deal had gone very badly. Members of the parish considered what we could do in response that would be helpful and hopeful. We created a procession of hope: we marched through the area – praying and singing and blessing with water – all done with the intent of reclaiming the neighborhood as holy ground. We staged these “processions of hope” three different times, the last with members of a local synagogue. The marches had deep meaning and healing power for those who participated: but many residents – who we didn’t know – and who were by and large different racially, linguistically and religiously – had no clue what we were about. We could identify ourselves as neighbors only because we lived in the same census tract. We had no relationships with one another. We discontinued the processions because we began to detect a spiritual arrogance on our part: that we were bringing the presence of God to places where God was absent. We were not the first missionaries to think this way.
But it didn’t feel right. Without our knowing it, when we stopped the processions we began to develop a ministry based on imago Dei – that we all are created in the image of God. We began to meet our neighbors. We held events for kids. We learned each other’s stories. Instead of operating from the hubris of thinking that we were bringing God’s blessing into a blighted area, we ventured into the neighborhood for the purpose of discovering where else God was working. We learned from each other – mostly about the diversity and depth of God. We learned about the difference between seeing someone as an object of interest and relating to a neighbor whose life and story can open others up to deeper dimensions of God and create greater opportunities for shared compassion. And we learned about God’s passion for justice – and that we all are called to work with similar passion so that the image of God as reflected in the face and life of a neighbor is given the opportunity to bloom into yet another one of God’s great ideas.
The
Reverend Mark Beckwith, an early member of Interweave, was elected the
10th Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark on September 23. During
the 1980s and early 1990s while serving St. Peter’s, Morristown and
Christ Church, Hackensack, Mark participated in an Interweave spiritual
sharing group and invited Director Robert Corin Morris to present Lenten
series and adult education programs. Since 1993 he has been Rector of
All Saints Church in Worcester, Massachusetts, where his staff includes
fellow Interweave member and former presenter the Rev. Nancy Elder-Wilfrid.
Sharing Interweave’s commitment to strengthening wellness, deepening
spirituality, and promoting the common good, Mark has developed healing
services, nurtured a spiritual fellowship at his parish, and worked for
justice throughout his ministry. (