Amazing Peace: A Christmas Poem By Dr. Maya Angelou

Amazing Peace: A Christmas Poem

By Dr. Maya Angelou

Thunder rumbles in the mountain passes
And lightning rattles the eaves of our houses.
Flood waters await us in our avenues.

Snow falls upon snow, falls upon snow to avalanche
Over unprotected villages.
The sky slips low and grey and threatening.

We question ourselves.
What have we done to so affront nature?
We worry God.
Are you there? Are you there really?
Does the covenant you made with us still hold?

Into this climate of fear and apprehension, Christmas enters,
Streaming lights of joy, ringing bells of hope
And singing carols of forgiveness high up in the bright air.
The world is encouraged to come away from rancor,
Come the way of friendship.

It is the Glad Season.
Thunder ebbs to silence and lightning sleeps quietly in the corner.
Flood waters recede into memory.
Snow becomes a yielding cushion to aid us
As we make our way to higher ground.

Hope is born again in the faces of children
It rides on the shoulders of our aged as they walk into their sunsets.
Hope spreads around the earth. Brightening all things,
Even hate which crouches breeding in dark corridors.

In our joy, we think we hear a whisper.
At first it is too soft. Then only half heard.
We listen carefully as it gathers strength.
We hear a sweetness.
The word is Peace.
It is loud now. It is louder.
Louder than the explosion of bombs.

We tremble at the sound. We are thrilled by its presence.
It is what we have hungered for.
Not just the absence of war. But, true Peace.
A harmony of spirit, a comfort of courtesies.
Security for our beloveds and their beloveds.

We clap hands and welcome the Peace of Christmas.
We beckon this good season to wait a while with us.
We, Baptist and Buddhist, Methodist and Muslim, say come.
Peace.
Come and fill us and our world with your majesty.
We, the Jew and the Jainist, the Catholic and the Confucian,
Implore you, to stay a while with us.
So we may learn by your shimmering light
How to look beyond complexion and see community.

It is Christmas time, a halting of hate time.

On this platform of peace, we can create a language
To translate ourselves to ourselves and to each other.

At this Holy Instant, we celebrate the Birth of Jesus Christ
Into the great religions of the world.
We jubilate the precious advent of trust.
We shout with glorious tongues at the coming of hope.
All the earth's tribes loosen their voices
To celebrate the promise of Peace.

We, Angels and Mortal's, Believers and Non-Believers,
Look heavenward and speak the word aloud.
Peace. We look at our world and speak the word aloud.
Peace. We look at each other, then into ourselves
And we say without shyness or apology or hesitation.

Peace, My Brother.
Peace, My Sister.
Peace, My Soul.”

Downtown Talca 2010

Today, as I was working on the trauma healing project:  Roots in the Ruins: Hope in Trauma, I remembered the Feb. 27th, 2010 Earthquake....

Downtown Talca after the Earthquake

I walked downtown today

as I have countless times before,

crossing the main square to the post office

then heading up South One, the shopping street.

Weaving in and out, avoiding

people columned like dominoes

round the corner and

up the steps into the bank.

The lady selling band aids,

out-shouts other vendors,

and beggars,

and the music escaping from shops

to gulp down the morning breath of

coffee or fried food.

The policeman with the police dog watch

just like any other day.

It brings me up short.

I twist my head, ears straining

To fill in what is missing

behind the familiar noise…

Deafening silence.

I walk a little further and

stop.

I perceive

past the cacophony of

normalcy…

Screaming silence.

My heart skips

a beat

or two.

I, the one who loves silence,

   who pursues quiet

   like the photographer who seeks

   the prized instant

   when the shutter snaps and

   freezes time,

am frightened.

While others weep before the walls fallen,

  the holey roofs imprisoned behind the

  barrier of red warning tape,

  and the buildings condemned by orange

  spray paint crossing out another burial site,

I am engulfed by the

raging silence.

Two blocks, then three; and

silence hunts me down, a mountain lion

intent on its prey. My legs stay but my pounding

heart runs away, failing  gallantly

to imagine the stolen sounds

that left behind the

vacuum.

I turn into a busy street,

welcoming as never before,

the hum idling at a stoplight,

the screech of brakes,

the roar of revving motors, that

drown out the

silence

of downtown Talca after the

earthquake.

Elena Huegel

March 24, 2010

Seventh grade challenge

This week at the Shalom Center, we hosted a group of Seventh Graders from the Christian School of Curico along with eleven parents.  It was amazing to watch the newly trained challenge course instructors working with this energetic and intelligent class which has been known at the school as a "difficult" group. With a student who has cerebral palsy and is in a wheelchair, a half dozen diagnosed as hyperactive but taken off their meditations to go to school, and another with Asperger's syndrome, our greatest troubles came from overbearing parents!  The kids were fantastic!

This is the first time we have had a participant in a wheelchair at the Shalom Center, and even though we don't have the trails or the equipment for it, this young man with his good humor and wit, was the perfect introduction.  Thanks, Mauricio, we learned so much from you!

 

Challenge course with the choir directors from Curicó

Shalom Center: Organization for the environment and culture

Finally!  God does all things at the best time.  Las Friday, the Shalom Center Council, the new Shalom Center director, and representatives of the staff gathered in San Clemente to sign the paperwork for a new municipal social organization.  Under this new legality, the Shalom Center will be able to write projects and receive funding from the municipal government of San Clemente.  The Shalom Center is not yet a foundation, but this is the first step in the process. 

Equilibrium

Equilibrium

I am the weight hanging on a chain linked to God.

God sustains to center point

I swing from end to end.

I extend to the tip of the arc;

God comes along, firmly attached to my middle

And tugging at the end of the stretch.

I fling past the medium

Barely catching my balance before I am off again

Flying futher up and further away on the other side.

Back and forth: joy versus grief, peace versus torment.

Back and forth: growth versus stability, dreams versus apathy.

Back and forth: alone versus company, energy versus exhaustion.

Will the waltz slow as I grow old?

The connection to heaven will tenderly guide me

With grace to perfect equilibrium.

April 30, 2000

Curicó, Chile

Elena Huegel

I´d write for you a rainbow

I´D WRITE FOR YOU A RAINBOW

by Ann Weems

If I could, I´d write for you a

rainbow

And splash it with all the

colors of God

And hang it in the widow of

your being

So that each new God´s

morning

Your eyes would open first

To Hope and Promise.

If I could, I´sd wipe away

your tears

And hold you close forever in

shalom.

But God never promised I

could suffer for you,

Only promised I could love you.

That I do.

Future Tense

Future Tense

In the waiting room
   I sit.
In the not yet here,
   can´t do anything to rush it.
Want to do something
   meaningful
Want to look back
   from ahead
and nod; it was a worthwhile
   life.

Eh May 2009

George Bernard Shaw

Life is no brief candle to me.  It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

The Bicycle

The Bicycle

I noticed the bicycle “graffiti” painted on the wall of the building.  It clearly had been painted a long time ago as there were several new coats of paint that carefully outlined, but didn’t touch, the two wheeler’s silhouette.  The building was a windowless, cement monster left over from an era of government efficiency that left no room for beauty or creativity.  Edgardo, a bright fifteen year old native of the city of Resistencia and member of the Christian Church, Disciples of Christ in Argentina took me on a tour of downtown, pointing out the same bicycle painted on different walls around the city. 

But it was that first bicycle I saw that I won’t forget.  It was painted on the wall by the first step leading to an unobtrusive side- entrance to that massive building.  Edgardo took me inside to what had been holding rooms, torture chambers and dungeons during the horrid years of the Argentine military dictatorship.  The stark walls and bare rooms screamed painfully louder than words or photographs.  I could not stand to look past the iron bars of a little gate, down the dark stairs to a water-filled basement, muddy hand-prints still streaking the paint.  I escaped back out onto the street gulping in the cool air, filling my lungs with freedom and willing my soul and stomach to settle.  Edgardo followed me outside. 

We stood there beside the painted silhouette bicycle, and gently he explained.  “You might say this is protest art.  During the dictatorship, two friends met on the street, one riding his bicycle and the other walking.  The friend on the bicycle did not greet his friend who was walking, but rode past and a short distance away, got off his bicycle and tied it to a tree.  He never turned to look at or acknowledge his friend.  The next day, the friend who had been walking, hurt by the indifference, found the bicycle still tied to the same tree.  He never saw his friend again.  Then he found out his friend had been followed by the police the day before and knew he would be arrested.  He did not greet his friend so as to not put him into danger.  We know that there were at least 350 bicycles painted around the city in places where people were kidnapped, detained or shot.  The bicycle beside this doorway indicates the entrance to this detention and torture center right on the main square of my city.  Everyone knew what happened here, but the police denied any wrong doing.  After the dictatorship ended, and this and other buildings were re-conditioned and white-washed for new and less violent purposes, the painters have carefully avoided erasing the silent protest of the bicycle.    This bicycle, and the others painted around town, reminds us that we still have many questions from the dictatorship that we must struggle as individuals and as a country to understand and answer.  This is the silent appeal of the rider-less bicycle: “Where is my friend?”

Elena Huegel

Resistencia, Argentina

July 2014

    

Walt Whitman

...I know nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses
toward the sky, Or wade with naked feet
along the beach just in the edge of the
water, or stand under trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with any one I love, or
sleep in bed at night with anyone I love,
Or sit at table at dinner with the rest,
Or look at strangers opposite me riding
in the car, or watch honey-bees busy
around the hive of a summer forenoon,
Or animals feeding in the fields, or birds,
Or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,
Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the
new moon in spring.

These with the rest, one and all, are to me
miracles, the whole referring, yet each distinct in in its place.

To me every hour of the light and dark
is a miracle.  Every cubic inch of space
is a miracle, every square yard of the
surface of the earth is spread with
miracles, every foot of the interior swarms
with miracles.

Rev. Peter Gomes

Hope is a slippery word and particularly so when it is used in connection with the future and as an antidote to anxiety and fear, but it is just hope that people require in facing their futures; and hope´s greatest power is that it enables the present by embracing the future... Hope does not deny the circumstances of the present, and hope doesn't help us get out of our difficulties.  Hope doesn't get us out, but it does get us through.

Madeleine L'Engle

I will not have anything to do with a God who cares only occasionally.  I need a God who is with us always, everywhere, in the deepest depths as well as the highest heights.  It is when things go wrong, when the good things do not happen, when our prayers seem to have been lost, that God is most present.  We do not need the sheltering wings when things go smoothly.  We are closest to God in the darkness, stumbling along blindly.

Nancy Wood

My help is in the mountain
Where I take myself to heal
The earthly wounds
That people give to me.
I find a rock with sun on it
and a stream where the water runs
gently and the trees which one
by one give me company.
So must I stay for a long time
Until I have grown from the rock
And the stream is running through me
And I cannot tell myself from one tall tree,
Then I know that nothing touches me
Nor makes me run away.
My help is in the mountain
That I take away with me.

Earth cure me.  Earth receive my woe.
Rock strengthen me.  Rock receive my
weakness. Rain wash my sadness away.
Rain receive my doubt.  Sun make sweet
my song.  Sun receive the anger from
my heart.

Thomas Merton

You do not need to know precisely what is happening or exactly where it is all going.  What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment and to embrace them with courage, faith and hope.

Avery Brooke

Having faith means that we stop worrying so much about what we don´t believe and learn to listen for whispers of the unprovable Infinite... In our heart and minds, in the happenings of each day, in the hills and in the streets, in horror and happiness, God is there, and if we listen and do not turn away, we will hear God.

Experience and relationship: keys to transformation

Hello to everyone from Resistencia in the Chaco Region of Argentina.  I would like to share an article that I wrote for Intersections, a publication of the Mennonite Central Committee with all of you who are interested in education.  You can download the magazine at the following link.  Mine is the last article in the publication.  Experience and relationship: keys to transformation 
by Elena Huegel

http://mcc.org/media/resources/1127

more general link to the MCC Intersections publication:
http://mcc.org/stories/intersections 
 -- 

Marion Wright Edelman

There is only one minute in which you are alive, this minute, here and now.  The only way to live is by accepting each minute as an unrepeatable miracle.  Which is exactly what it is -- a miracle and unrepeatable.

Early snow at the Shalom Center

My plans to work at the Shalom Center this week were foiled by an unusually early snow.  Nearly three feet of snow in some places brought down trees.  We will have a lot of clean up to do!

Strategic planning at the Shalom Center

Dear Friends and Family,

For the last month or so, I have been working with the staff on the new strategic plan for the Shalom Center.  In 2015, the Shalom Center will be celebrating 15 years and the conclusion of the start up objectives.  There are many reasons to celebrate!  We have been evaluating and dreaming, sharing and remembering, and working hard to put our vision and mission together into one path ahead.  It is my pleasure to share with you with working draft.  Thanks to each of you who have made the Shalom Center possible!  Shalom, Elena

Strategic plan for the Shalom Center

Pentecostal Church of Chile

2015-2030

Motto of the Shalom Center:   A gathering place

Shalom Center vision:   The Shalom Center of the Pentecostal Church of Chile will be a place to renew relationships with God, self, others and nature.

Shalom Center mission:   Create a safe space through learning for transformation to facilitate peace education, environmental education and spiritual development in an integral way, and so strengthen the dignity and resilience of individuals and communities within the Pentecostal Church of Chile and society at the national and international levels.

Institutional values:

Faith for the Shalom Center is to believe in God, in the best in people, and in restorative processes.

Dignity for the Shalom Center is the inherent value of each person as God's creation.

Safe space at the Shalom Center is the commitment to create, respect and care for the community covenant.

Creativity  at the Shalom Center is the expression of the breath of God in individuals and groups.

Transformation in the Shalom Center is the invitation to healing and holistic development in people, groups and systems.

Theoretical framework: Reconciliation that leads to transformation to build Shalom.

Educational strategy:  Learning for transformation which is, according to the social constructivist model, an appreciative process whereby the methodology (experiential learning cycle), the relationships (healing and reconciliation), and the times/space (safe space) come together to reach desired changes.

General objectives from 2015 – 2030 (By area)

1.    Christian education: Promote the spiritual growth of each participant through the Christian disciplines such as Bible study, prayer and journaling so that, the desire to transform family, church and community flows from a rich and deep relationship with God.

2.    Peace education: Foster sustainable and holistic peace processes through trauma healing and conflict transformation that balance justice, truth, mercy and dignity.

3.    Environmental education: Open educational spaces to introduce people to the natural world propitiating a profound commitment with environmental care and promoting the healing of the relationship with God´s creation.

4.    Health and safety:  Generate spaces that foment holistic health in body, mind, spirit and relationships of the participants and staff.

5.    Capacity building:  Train the staff in all of the fundamental areas of the Shalom Center  so that through personal growth and self care, they will have the tools  to build the safe space for transformation and integral development with the participants and groups.

6.    International delegations and volunteers: Create a network to promote God´s shalom through international and intercultural gatherings and volunteer opportunities to propitiate the healing of relationships at personal, community and structural levels and the exchange of experiences and new learning.

7.     Art and Creativity:  Spread the institutional image of the Shalom Center in the social networks at the ecclesiastical, national and international level, create promotional materials for the Shalom Center programs and activities, design and produce educational and audio-visual materials, and promote activities that foster peace through diverse artistic expressions.

8.    Administration and organization: Install and maintain a trustworthy, transparent and organized institution at the service of our church and the community in general, delivering clear and reliable information, and contributing to decision making, staff appreciation, future projections.

Strategic Plan 2015 – 2030

Phase 1: Years 2015 – 2020 Placing the shalom table

Phase 2: Years 2020 - 2025 Invitation to the shalom feast

Phase 3:  Years 2025 -2030 Celebrating the shalom feast

1.  OBJETIVE Christian education: Promote the spiritual growth of each participant through the Christian disciplines such as Bible study, prayer and journaling so that, the desire to transform family, church and community flows from a rich and deep relationship with God.

1.    Prayer shawl retreats

2.    Trauma healing, resilience development Sunday School materials (in coordination with the Sunday School department of the Pentecostal Church of Chile.)

3.    Leadership course

4.    Re-create camps

5.    Marriage retreats

6.    Retreats for churches, pastors and pastor's kids

2. OBJECTIVE Peace education: Foster sustainable and holistic peace processes through trauma healing and conflict transformation that balance justice, truth, mercy and dignity.

1.    Conflict transformation workshops

2.    Mediacción: youth mediation course

3.    Roots in the ruins: hope in trauma courses

4.    Support for churches or communities that suffer some kind of trauma.

3. OBJETIVE Environmental education: Open educational spaces to introduce people to the natural world propitiating a profound commitment with environmental care and promoting the healing of the relationship with God´s creation.

1. Develop and implement an interpretive trail
2. Organic garden and tree farm (native species only)
3. Creacción camps for elementary school children (Environmental education)
4. International environmental education gathering
5. Environmental education games and materials
6. Healing through nature retreats

4. OBJETIVE  Health and safety:  Generate spaces that foment holistic health in body, mind, spirit and relationships of the participants and staff.

1. Certification of staff
2. Emergency simulation activities
3. Maintenance and purchase of emergency equipment
4. Menus based on needs and according the Shalom principles
5. Workshops on health and wholeness during retreats and camps.
6. Health activities in the local mountain community around the Shalom Center

5. OBJETIVE Capacity building:  Train the staff in all of the fundamental areas of the Shalom Center  so that through personal growth and self care, they will have the tools  to build the safe space for transformation and integral development with the participants and groups.

1.    Three all-staff meetings a year

2.    Emergency simulation and spiritual retreat in alternating years.

3.    Annual theme preparation along with educational materials

4.    Training workshops around specific topics (such as abuse prevention)

5.    Training in all of the programs of the Shalom Center according to interests and needs.

6.    International camp gathering  (July 2015, July 2016, January 2017

7.    Certification process for Challenge Course Instructors

6. OBJETIVE International delegations and volunteers: Create a network to promote God´s shalom through international and intercultural gatherings and volunteer opportunities to propitiate the healing of relationships at personal, community and structural levels and the exchange of experiences and new learning.

1.    International delegations

2.    Preparations in local churches to receive delegations

3.    Staff training in international camps and gatherings

4.    Organize international volunteer opportunities

7. OBJETIVE  Art and Creativity:  Spread the institutional image of the Shalom Center in the social networks at the ecclesiastical, national and international level, create promotional materials for the Shalom Center programs and activities, design and produce educational and audio-visual materials, and promote activities that foster peace through diverse artistic expressions.

1.    Create institutional image manual

2.    Create promotional materials

3.    Design webpage and Facebook page

4.    Train staff for communication and public relations

5.    Promote the Shalom Center at all national church activities and in different community activities

6.    Network with other organizations

7.    Workshops at camps and retreats

8. OBJETIVE Administration and organization: Install and maintain a trustworthy, transparent and organized institution at the service of our church and the community in general, delivering clear and reliable information, and contributing to decision making, staff appreciation, future projections.

1. Audits, cost analysis, review organizational charts, inventory
2. Accounting plan
3. Quality plan that includes documentations, systematization and best practices
4. Annual budgets and reports
5. Service team
6. Financial strategy
7. Follow process to become a non-profit
8. Evaluations

Wendell Berry

....So, friends, every day do something that won't compute.  Love the Lord.  Love the world.  Love someone who does not deserve it.  Ask the questions that have no answers.  Invest in the millennium.  Plant sequoias.  Put your faith in the two inches of humus that will build under the trees every two thousand years.  Laugh.  Laughter is immeasurable.  Be joyful although you have considered all the facts... Practice resurrection.   Wendell Berry

e.e.cummings

I thank You for most this amazing day
and for the leaping greenly spirits of
trees and a blue true dream of sky; and
for everything which is natural which is
infinite which is yes

(I who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the
birth day of life and of love and wings:
and of the gay great happenings
illimitably earth)

How should tasting touching hearing
seeing breathing -- lifted from the no
of all nothing  -- human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(Now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

e.e. cummings

Strategic planning

Dear Friends and Family:

This past weekend the staff and board of the Shalom Center met to look at the vision and mission of the Shalom Center, to evaluate the first fourteen years of work, and to begin to create a new strategic plan that will go into effect next year.  As part of the evaluation process, Rodrigo Martinez prepared this video.  I would like to say GRACIAS to each one of you who have made the Shalom Center possible.  This video is dedicated to you!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NtNXmURJN0&feature=youtu.be

Shalom
E

With the wings of the soul

I dedicate this song to those who are struggling to fly on the wings of their souls in northern Chile and Valparaíso.  I have roughly translated this tango into English further down.  Shalom, EH

Con las alas del alma

Tango

Música: Daniel García

Letra: Eladia Blázquez

Con las alas del alma desplegadas al viento, desentraño la esencia de mi propia existencia sin desfallecimiento, y me digo que puedo como en una constante y me muero de miedo, pero sigo adelante. Con las alas del alma desplegadas al viento, porque aprecio la vida en su justa medida al amor lo reinvento, y al vivir cada instante y al gozar cada intento, sé que alcanzo lo grande, con las alas del alma desplegadas al viento. Con las alas del alma desplegadas al viento, más allá del asombro me levanto entre escombros sin perder el aliento y me voy de las sombras con algún filamento y me subo a la alfombra con la magia de un cuento. Con las alas del alma desplegadas al viento, atesoro lo humano cuando tiendo las manos a favor del encuentro por la cosa más pura, con la cual me alimento por mi pan de ternura, con las alas del alma desplegadas al viento. Con las alas del alma desplegadas al viento, ante cada noticia de estupor, de injusticia, me desangro por dentro y me duele la gente, su dolor, sus heridas, porque así solamente interpreto la vida. Con las alas del alma desplegadas al viento, más allá de la historia, de las vidas sin gloria, sin honor ni sustento guardaré del que escribe su mejor pensamiento quiero amar a quien vive con las alas del alma desplegadas al viento, al viento, al viento...

With the wings of the soul

Tango

Music by Daniel García

Words by Eladia Blázquez

With the wings of the soul spread to the wind I unravel the essence of my own existence without fainting, and I tell myself I can, though I am dying of fear, but I continue onward. With the wings of the soul spread to the wind, Because I appreciate life, in just the right amount, And I reinvent love when I live every instant Enjoying each attempt. I know I will reach greatness With wings of the soul spread to the wind. With the wings of the soul spread to the wind Beyond amazement, I rise from the rubble Without losing my breath.  And I leave the shadows on a filament And climb aboard a rug with the magic of a story. With the wings of the soul extended to the wind I treasure humanity when I open my hands in favor of coming together for something more pure. I feed on the bread of tenderness, With the wings of the soul spread to the wind. With the wings of the soul spread to the wind, With every news of injustice I bleed within I feel with the people, their pain, their hurts Because only that way can I understand life. With the wings of the soul spread to the wind Beyond history, of lives without glory or honor, simply I will treasure  good thoughts written. And I will love those who beside me live, our wings of the soul spread to the wind…