President's Blog

As we enter the Lenten season, my colleague Luke Fodor has shared some thoughts on Ash Wednesday and what it means to be “marked” as followers of Jesus:

Today many of us will go to church and experience that familiar annual ritual of receiving an ashen cross marked on our foreheads.  Since the 9th century, the Church has commenced the holy season of Lent with the imposition of ashes, as a reminder that we “are dust and to dust we shall return.”  This ritual is the highlight of the service.  On the streets of Manhattan, like in other cities across the country, many do not even have to darken the door of a church to receive ashes, as priests stand ready to mark passersby.

Last year, the terror of this simple penitential service shook me as I took my eight-month-old son forward to receive ashes on his forehead.  Seeing the ash on his head brought me out of any isolated, individual or maudlin thoughts about my own mortality or my own sin.  Seeing the ash on his soft skin caused something to crumble inside of me.  Even the newly born—so pure and so innocent—are marked for death.

This year, as I prepare to again enter into the terror of Ash Wednesday, my thoughts are with our Haitian brothers and sisters.  It seems their whole existence is marked with dust.  Today, as our Haitian brothers and sisters receive that mark on their heads, how can they not remember the dust in their mouths left by the quake that has turned their lives upside down?  How can they not remember their loved ones and their homes that are now nothing but dust and rubble?  And yet, we have all seen news footage—the inexplicable singing of hymns and banding together as a community—that shows the resilient spirit of the Haitian people.

Yes, on this Ash Wednesday as we collectively receive ashes, let us all remember that we are marked for death.  That simple ashen cross reminds us of our mortality—but it also speaks of hope.  It is a reminder of another cross, one marked in oil, that once adorned our head at our baptisms.  And though that oil has long ago soaked into our skin or been wiped away, it has indelibly marked us.  In dying with Christ, we live again.  We live again, and not for ourselves, but for others.  We have taken a covenant at our baptism “to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourselves.”

As we see ashen foreheads, turbaned foreheads or blank foreheads all around us, how can we as followers of the Anointed One love them?   We are marked for death and we are marked for a life of selfless service.  On this Ash Wednesday, I echo that sacred invitation to a Holy Lent.  I invite you to meditate on this simple question:  How can you, like our Lord Jesus, be a person marked for others?

Luke Fodor is Episcopal Relief & Development’s Network Coordinator and a second-year seminarian at Bexley Hall Seminary.

Somehow, I went to bed on Tuesday night in denial.  By Wednesday morning that was over.  I had that awful feeling in the pit of my stomach.  It was the same feeling I had after the tsunami and the same feeling I had after Katrina.   I could tell immediately that this is going to be a long haul for many years: a marathon, not a sprint.

It is important to remember that all disasters have a life cycle:  “The Three Rs of Disasters.”

Right now, we are in the “Rescue” phase.  All hands are on deck to save lives and property.  This phase involves finding and treating the immediate medical needs of survivors and stabilizing ongoing hazards, such as shifting buildings. As such, it is best left to the heavy lifters - government and military search and rescue teams. These groups also have heavy equipment that can clear roads and debris, as well as large specialized operations with mass distribution systems that have pre-positioned warehouses.   The “Rescue” phase typically lasts a week, but with the extraordinary logistical hurdles being faced in Haiti, it may take longer.

The next phase is the “Relief” phase, where the focus is on creating temporary safe and sanitary conditions.  As I saw in Katrina, the church is often one of the first places people go to seek assistance and shelter.  We have already heard that in rural and outlying areas around the earthquake zone, existing clinics are seeing patients who have been able to get out of Port-au-Prince. Some of these clinics are expanding patient care to schools and church buildings.  The “Relief” phase typically lasts a few months.

Finally, we get to the third and final phase: “Recovery.”  During recovery the emphasis shifts to restoring services, rebuilding houses and buildings, and returning, to self-sufficiency.   The Diocese of Haiti has a very large and vibrant social infrastructure and we fully expect that Episcopal Relief & Development will be there for the long haul supporting their important and vibrant ministries. 

The challenge of the “Recovery” phase is that most of the television cameras have moved on, but the human suffering has grown.  It is a chronic state, not a crisis.  However, it is the phase that Episcopal Relief & Development and its partners excel at, because we work with churches that are part of the communities and know the needs best and how to meet them.  This phase will last years.   The unmet needs in a place like Haiti - which already struggles with immense, chronic poverty - will be monumental.

Right now Episcopal Relief & Development is focused on preparing for the “Relief” phase and securing the resources for the “Recovery” phase. 

Please pray for our brothers and sisters in Haiti.

For more information on the Haiti earthquake and on Episcopal Relief & Development’s response, please visit www.er-d.org/HaitiCrisis.

Photo courtesy of United in Christ Church

Okay.  I’ll admit it:  I’m a snob about crèches.  It seems very unlikely to me that Jesus was born under any of the circumstances represented by most of crèches that you see today.  Why do we insist on representing his birth in such improbable settings?

Recently my snobbery was sorely put to the test in Rome.  One of the highlights of Rome this time of year is the myriad of crèches in each church.  In fact, there seemed to be a bit of a competition regarding who could have the most elaborate crèche, although no church dared to take on St. Peter’s Basilica. It stopped just short of a full-blown Disney production.

On New Years Day, more to take refuge from the rain than from a sincere interest, I happened upon an exhibition of over 100 creches. Many embassies in Rome had contributed to the exhibition, as had towns and villages throughout Italy. 

There were numerous crèches from Africa, including one depicting Jesus and the Holy Family as Maasai, and crèches from Latin and South America showing Jesus and the Holy Family as indigenous people.  There were crèches from around Italy showing Jesus as a chubby, cherubic baby of the Renaissance.  There was a crèche showing Jesus and the Holy Family as Eskimos in an igloo attended by flocks of penguins rather than sheep.  I have to say, I loved that one.

Believe it or not, there were even a SpongeBob SquarePants crèche and a sock puppet crèche. 

However, the most moving crèche was from the children of L’Aquila, an Italian town that had been severely damaged during an earthquake last year, showing Jesus and the Holy Family in the midst of the destruction of their village.

That’s when I got it.  A crèche isn’t meant to represent an historical account of the birth of Jesus.  It is meant to show us how God is made incarnate through Jesus in our everyday lives—by being born in the hearts of the children of L’Aquila after an earthquake and in an igloo attended by penguins.

As Christmas gives way to Epiphany, and crèches are packed away until next year, perhaps you’d like to share ways in which God is made incarnate in your life?

As 2009 draws to a close, one can almost hear the sighs of relief.   The financial crisis has affected millions here in the U.S. But even in the midst of it, I’m reminded of the vital support we get from the men, women and children of the Episcopal Church.  For without that faithful support, the things left undone would be even more sobering than they already are. 

As bad as things were here, it is always those living in the poorest parts of the world who are hit hardest. We are seeing firsthand how the crisis is affecting them—and we are also experiencing the impact on our work. Looking at some of the year-end reports from our program partners, I pray that things will get better soon.

Just to give you a sense of what has happened in our Latin America programs:

• In 2008, our program with an ecumenical partnership in Haiti planted almost 1,000,000 trees.  However, for 2009, we are expecting to plant half that amount: around 500,000.

• In 2008, as part of the Haitian church’s social safety net, our school canteen feeding program for young children in primary schools fed approximately 1,500 children.  However, for 2009 we will feed about 1,000 children, and we expect to have to decrease the amount further in 2010.  That is 500 children who will not receive a hot meal in school.

• The number of latrines built by communities in Nicaragua is half what it was for 2008 due to both a decrease in budget and a concurrent increase in the cost of building materials.  We had seen over the past two years a steady decrease in the number of people with diarrhea in areas where our program is implemented.  However, we are afraid that with fewer sanitation facilities such as latrines, wells, and washing stations built by the communities, we may see diarrhea rates increase. This is particularly worrisome and dangerous, as dehydration and diarrhea are among the top killers of children under five in developing countries.

Poverty is an immediate and critical problem for hundreds of millions of people around the world. Lower or delayed donations in 2009 for Episcopal Relief & Development and other humanitarian organizations meant that the poor of the world measured the economic crisis not in dollars, but in meals foregone, increases in preventable disease and—almost certainly—lives lost.

Those of you who support our work have given sacrificially to Episcopal Relief & Development and I am deeply grateful.  Had you not supported us, the things left undone would have been even more catastrophic.

As the final darkest days of the year draw around us and Advent comes to a close with Jesus’ birth, I found myself lingering over this wonderful prayer by Mary C. Earle in San Antonio, Texas from Lifting Women’s Voices:

O Come Emmanuel

O come, O come Emmanuel
Come now to us, in your many disguises
Come now to us, in every language
Come now to us, in every culture

Come now to us, in every color
Come now to us, that every moment may be pregnant with your advent
Come now to us, that we may breathe and labor and deliver you
Here, now, in our midst and in our souls
And let us say:  Amen.

May the baby Jesus live in your soul this Christmastide and for ever-more.