Our church has just finished its 11th consecutive year of mission partnership with our sister church in the village of Amatenango, Mexico. When people hear the word “mission” they often think of Christians going into the world to convert others to a certain religious belief system, but we don’t subscribe to that stereotype. We’re not interested in pressuring people to believe as we do but in joining with them to construct the reign of God. Scripture portrays this reign as a whole and loving creation in which all creatures live together in love.
While driving to the small community of San Gregorio, Padre Carlo noted that peasant farmers are always working, but work for them does not always consist of tilling the earth or planning or harvesting. Sometimes “work” involves communing with the earth.
“What are you doing today?” Carlo once asked a campesino.
“Working.”
“What kind of work are you doing?”
For 11 years, the First Congregational United Church of Christ of Grand Marais has had a relationship with a church in the village of Amatenango. Minnesota visitors have come to know Father Carlo and the children he serves in Tulanca.
“I’m going out to look at the corn,” the campesino replied.
In the Mayan world, looking at the corn is an act of caregiving, like visiting a friend. When we look at the corn, we receive the heart energy of the plant and our own heart enters into the corn, developing a caring relationship. With the development of such relationships comes an increased love for all things and this is the spirit of solidarity our mission partnership seeks to encourage.
About seven years ago, Padre Carlo and Hermana Paty visited our United Church of Christ congregation in Grand Marais. During their stay they shared our way of life, paddling canoes offered by the Hansens at Sawbill Lake and enjoying a B-B-Q at Dan and Joanne Edson’s home. During the week, we listened to the singing of the loons at night, had a water balloon fight under the summer stars, shopped for food at the co-op, and did a radio interview on WTIP. “Pedro,” Carlo said while looking at the lake from Artist’s Point, “tu vives en paradiso.”— you live in paradise.
Thisyear, Carlo emphasized that Chiapas also is a paradise and, indeed, it is a lovely, exotic place. Steve and I enjoyed being surrounded by mountains shrouded in clouds, fields of wildflowers and trees filled with lemons and limes. Most days, we dined on campesino cuisine prepared on wood fires: fresh corn tortillas, soups filled with red chilis, tomatoes and bits of beef or chicken, and lemonade.
In one week, we visited with more than a half dozen communities and talked for hours about life, faith and discipleship. In every pueblo, Carlo told the story about the large loaf of bread Don Davison baked to celebrate the Eucharist when he was in Grand Marais. Carlo explained that the bread contained corn flour symbolizing the church in Chiapas and wheat, symbolizing our congregation in Grand Marais. “It is,” Carlo said, “a symbol of our distinctive faith traditions and
our oneness in Christ.”
Then, during the Sunday mass in Amatenango, Carlo and I celebrated an ecumenical Eucharist for the 11th year. We blessed the bread and cup proclaiming, “Somos uno en Cristo!”—We are one in Christ. When the offering was collected, Steve presented an envelope filled with $2,000 to the congregation. It was a joint gift given by our United Church of
Christ and Saint John’s Roman Pizza • Sandw ches
Catholic Church—our generous
Spec alties
sister congregation here in
(218) 387-1713
Grand Marais.
Our mission partnership is conducted at the intersection of faith and life. There, we take the teachings of the gospel and endeavor to live them out. So it is that we’ve attempted to love our neighbor as ourselves by constructing an allpurpose church meeting room, a health clinic, two churches and a Medical Discretionary Fund. We’ve offered guitars to choirs and computers to country schools. We’ve handed out homemade sweaters to children, offered by Mary Igoe and other knitters in Grand Marais. This year, we gave a special gift to the isolated community of Tulanca to purchase a shortwave radio, which will allow them to communicate with other villages. When we presented a $1,000 gift for this purpose, a leader of the pueblo raised his hands to the sky and said, “We have prayed and waited for fifteen years for help and this is a gift from God.” With tears in his eyes, Carlo said, “This is the faith of the poor.”
Several days later, we celebrated the construction of a new church in Cruz Quemada that we have been working on for the past two years. During our meeting, I knocked loudly on the hollow block wall of the church and noted that our partnership has the capacity to create miracles. Each year, we gather to dream about the future, to give those dreams to God in prayer, and then we make those dreams into concrete reality with our money and our sweat.
Life continues to be a struggle in Chiapas. There is great poverty, human rights are violated and multinational corporations engage in land grabbing. Progressives who live out the gospel through their social justice ministries are often kicked out of their churches by members who prefer another-worldly faith rather than one that seeks to construct the reign of God on earth.
But in spite of such difficulties, there is hope for a new world, a world in which peace reigns and there is justice for all. How can a small Protestant congregation on the North Shore that finds it difficult to balance its own budget manage
to walk hand in hand with small
uv g Mayan Catholic congregations
” in Chiapas in order to offer one
nM s
Toft
another abundant life? This is
3 41
6 7891
the greatest miracle of all—a Thanksgiving gift from God.
Each month a member of the
Cook County Ministerium will
offer Spiritual Reflections. For
November, our contributor
is Reverend Peter R. Monkres
of the First Congregational
Church – United Church of
Christ, Grand Marais, a Just
Peace church.
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