Non-Profit Org.
U.S. POSTAGE
PAID
Atlanta, Georgia
Permit No. 1264
HOSPITALITY
Address Service
Requested
FREE
The Open Door Community – Hospitality & Resistance in the Catholic Worker Movement
vol. 26, no.9
910 Ponce de Leon Ave. NE Atlanta, GA 30306-4212 404.874.9652 www.opendoorcommunity.org
November-December 2007
Crossing the Line:
Acting to Close the School of the Americas
By Mike Vosburg-Casey
Editor’s note: Mike Vosburg-Casey has been a part of the
Open Door Community for seven years. He lived at 910 as
a Resident Volunteer from 2001 to 2003. Since that time,
Mike and his wife, Amy Vosburg-Casey, have continued as
companions in sharing the works of mercy, working for the
abolition of the death penalty and in resistance against war,
poverty and oppression.
Mike preached the following sermon at Open Door
worship not long after he was released from 100 days in
federal prison for his resistance against the School of the
Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia. We invite you to join us
at the annual demonstration at the gates of Fort Benning on
November 18. For details, see Page 10 and www.soaw.org.
Gospel Reading: Luke 2:49-56
I want to thank the Open Door for making this
forum available to me to talk about the School of the
Americas and my recent incarceration, and thanks to so many
folks for being here tonight. Nonetheless, I do enter into this
moment with fear and trembling. I’ve not preached from this
pulpit before. And while people were complimentary about
the only past occasion I spoke from a pulpit, I am aware that
(until now) I had not been invited to do so again. Simply put,
preaching is not something to which I feel particularly called.
Yet St. Francis, who was himself a war resister, helpfully
reminds me, “Preach the gospel at all times, and when
necessary use words.” And this seems to be one of those
times, so here come the words.
I want to first talk about an institution in Georgia,
not far south of here. This almost entirely male environment
houses men from often far away. They wear uniforms. They
learn all sorts of things, in official and unofficial ways. They
constantly prepare for their return home.
Fort Benning in Columbus is home to this school,
now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security
Cooperation. Founded in 1964 in Panama, the then-named
School of the Americas was kicked out of Panama and moved
to Georgia in 1984. Called by a former president of Panama
“the biggest base for destabilization in Latin America,”
this training facility instructs soldiers from throughout the
Spanish-speaking countries of Central and South America.
The function of the school is to ensure that American
dominance throughout the region continues through military
means. And, though students are enrolled in courses titled
“Democratic Sustainment” and “Human Rights,” the history
of graduates from the School of the Americas paints a very
different picture.
The over 60,000 former students have been linked to
atrocities in wars waged against their own people. Hundreds
of thousands of Latin Americans have been killed, tortured,
raped, imprisoned or forced into exile by the graduates of
this School of Assassins. These soldiers often include highlevel military commanders like former Panamanian dictator
Manuel Noriega, Hugo Banzar Suarez of Bolivia, retired
General Raul Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann (who helped to
overthrow the Chilean Allende democracy and is now a
fugitive, having recently been sentenced to a prison term for
his role in that bloody civil war) and Efrain Rios Mont from
Guatemala.
Currently Columbia sends the largest number of
students to this school. These soldiers return home and are
thrown into a multi-sided civil war under the veil of the
counter-narcotics and anti-terrorism program Plan Columbia.
The behavior of these soldiers clearly demonstrates that,
although the name of the School of the Americas has
changed, the shame of this School of Assassins remains the
same.
Founded by Maryknoll priest Father Roy Bourgeois
in the 1980s, the School of the Americas Watch group has
led our movement to close this institution, informed by our
conviction that the people of Latin America should make
the decisions about the direction of their countries and that
they should do so without military pressure or retaliation.
The School of the Americas Watch co-ordinates an annual
gathering outside the gates of Fort Benning. This event is
timed to coincide with the anniversary of a massacre in El
Salvador.
On November 19, 1989, a group of Salvadoran
soldiers, principally made up of and led by graduates of the
School of the Americas, killed six Jesuit priests, a co-worker
and her daughter. Every year, their memory is recalled as their
names are recited, along with the names of other victims of the
soldiers who have been trained at this Georgia institution. The
list of victims includes whole villages, church people, labor
activists and educators. And tonight, too, we remember them,
calling them forth and naming their presence here with us:
Ignacio Ellacuria, Ignacio Martin Baro, Segundo
Montes, Amano Lopez, Juaquin Lopez y Lopez, Juan Ramon
Moreno, Elba Ramos, Celina Ramos, Ita Ford, Dorothy
Kazel, Jeann Donovan, Maura Clark, Domingo Claros,
Cristino Amaya Claros, Maria Dolores Amaya Claros,
Marta Lilian Claros, Maria Isabel Amaya Claros, Isidra
Claros, Ruperto Chicas, Martina Rodriguez, Dionisia
Rodriguez, Archbishop Oscar Romero, Manuel Alvarenda,
Saturnina Diaz, Eusebia Diaz, Estela Diaz, Tomasa Argueta,
Luz Evidelia Orozco Saldarriaga, Angelica Mazo Arango,
Guillermo Orozco Escudero, Luis Alberto Lozano Ruiz,
Fabio Jaramillo, Libardo Antonio Castaño.
And, as those of us who have been able to attend the
annual vigil know, this is a list that continues and continues.
The victims of soldiers trained at this School of Assassins are
www.soaw.org
almost countless. Maybe this is one of the harsh truths that
Jesus reveals in today’s gospel reading. In trying to follow
him, many of these people became not only divided from
but killed by those with whom they could have shared so
much. Indeed, the wars throughout Latin America have often,
especially through forced military service, turned sons against
fathers and mothers against daughters.
But those of us who have attended the annual
vigil also know that the reading of the names can become
desensitizing after a time. I have found myself struggling
to realize that each name intoned is for a person who died
because of this school and wondering about my role, as
a citizen of the United States, as a resident of Georgia, in
allowing this terror to continue. So, this past November, I
participated in a direct action, crossing with 16 other people
onto the grounds of Fort Benning. Doing so, I hoped, would
serve as a way of making this reality more present to me and
to others.
Dr. King wrote about the strategy of direct action as
a means of raising the level of conflict, instead of covering
up conflicts that can lie hidden, and unspoken. I had
expected that by trespassing onto the military installation,
the fundamental conflict between God’s movement
toward justice and peace and our government’s program
Crossing the Line, continued on page 8
Hospitality
page 2
I Can’t Stand
to See a Fellow
Lying on the Ground
November-December 2007
poetry corner
Send us your poetry!
We especially welcome poetry from
people in prison and on the streets.
Julie Lonneman
By Brother Eduard-the-Agitator Loring
A cold coming we had of it,
Murphy and I. She was still shrunken by
the war in her beat-down body, the fight for
life against the omnivorous hungry cancer
cells working to eat my baby alive. We were
driving in a driving wind, up and down the
Tennessee mountains where Grant rode hard
to set us free.
“Sweetheart,” she twinkled, “I am
exhausted. Let’s stop and get a room.”
Motor Inns of America. Wind blew
her right up the metal stairs like she was
a boy’s kite in the later month of March.
I helped her into the bed. Covered her
with the extra blankets. She coughed the
fungal pneumonia cough which haunts me,
frighteningly, every time I hear a wheeze.
I turned, out the door bounded I, to
bring up the many articles in the car. We are
not light travelers. We tote lots of baggage to
deal with all the time. Even take meds to help
me along with it.
Just as I began my second load, the
heavy one, a broken-down car, mountain
mamma style parked next to our Volvo.
Out leaped six children like locusts trying to
escape the hungry hand of John the Baptist,
a mother and a dad. Not the Joads, but their
cousins for sure. The mother had a slight
line of tobacco juice in the left corner of her
stained mouth. She carried #6 up those metal
stairs. Father was in overalls and looked like
Chuck Harris with a hat on.
Well, I decided to clown. I took my
heavy load into their motel room with them.
Already over the brim like a cup from the
23rd Psalm, the room was wild with children
and tired parents.
“Excuse me, please,” interrupted I
full of juice like a plum in August. “I just saw
you coming in here and I have no place to
sleep. May I sleep in here with you?”
Father surveyed the room, hesitated,
said, “Yes. Of course you can.”
I was embarrassed, shamed,
wanting to flee. “No, no, no, I am just
joking,” I choked. “I have a room a couple
of doors down, and I saw all of you coming
into this room, and . . . well, er, excuse me
please.”
The Father shifted the sweat-stained
hat, looked at me like a friend and told me
who he is. “I can’t stand to see a fellow lying
on the ground.”
Brother Eduard-the-Agitator Loring is a
Partner at the Open Door Community.
On
Homelessness
By Roger Cooper
Some things are clear,
Some things are not.
I suppose I’m the one
That God forgot.
I shuffle along
These dirty streets,
Remembering that once,
I slept on sheets.
But now some cardboard
Is my bed,
My rolled up jacket
Rests my head.
If Jesus ever comes again,
And walks and talks with other men,
I hope that he encounters me,
And I will ask him, “Are you me?”
Editor’s note: Roger Cooper is a retired psychologist who lives in
Lady Lake, Florida. His poetry has been published in various poetry
journals. He is also active in the Hoederlin Society and travels often
to Tubingen, Germany for its meetings. >
Calvin Kimbrough
HOSPITALITY
Newspaper
Editor: Murphy Davis
Photography and Layout Editor: Calvin Kimbrough
Associate Editors: Eduard Loring, Gladys Rustay,
Lauren Cogswell, and Anne Wheeler
Copy Editing: David Mann, Julie Martin, and Charlotta Norby
Circulation: A multitude of earthly hosts
Subscriptions or change of address: Anne Wheeler
Hospitality is published 11 times a year by the Open
Door Community (PCUS), Inc., an Atlanta Protestant
Catholic Worker community: Christians called to
resist war and violence and nurture community in
ministry with and advocacy for the homeless poor
and prisoners, particularly those on death row.
Subscriptions are free. A newspaper request form is
included in each issue. Manuscripts and letters are
welcomed. Inclusive language editing is standard.
For more information about the life and work of the Open Door
Community, please contact any of the following persons.
A $7 donation to the Open Door Community would
help to cover the costs of printing and mailing
Hospitality for one year. A $30 donation covers
overseas delivery for one year.
Open Door Community
910 Ponce de Leon Avenue NE
Atlanta, GA 30306-4212
www.opendoorcommunity.org
404.874.9652; 404.874.7964 fax
Calvin Kimbrough
Open Door Community Partner Gladys Rustay (left) and
former Resident Volunteer Betty Jane Crandall greeted folks
at our Labor Day Picnic with smiles.
Tony Sinkfield: Hardwick Prison Trip and Food Coordinator
Gladys Rustay: Jackson Prison Trip and Food Coordinator
Dick Rustay and Lauren Cogswell: Dayspring Farm
Coordinators
Hannah Loring-Davis: Harriet Tubman Clinic Coordinator
Brother Eduard-the-Agitator Loring: Street Preacher
and Word On The Street Host
Phil Leonard: Administration and Finance, Hardwick
Prison Trip, Resident Volunteer Applications
Nelia and Calvin Kimbrough: Worship, Art, and Music
Coordinators
Chuck Harris: Volunteer Coordinator
Murphy Davis: Southern Prison Ministry
November-December 2007
Hospitality
page 3
A Witness to the Life and Faith
of Harmon Wray: July 28, 2007
By David Rainey
Editor’s note: On July 24, 2007, our longtime friend and
colleague Harmon Wray of Nashville, Tennessee, died very
suddenly. He was only 60 years old. We, along with his many
friends of every race and class inside and outside prison
walls, share a deep sense of loss. In the June-July 2007 issue
of Hospitality, we recommended Harmon’s recently published
“Beyond Prisons.” We will deeply miss his leadership and
writing, his passionate prophetic advocacy and solidarity with
the poor and with imprisoned children of God.
Harmon’s memorial service, attended by hundreds
of friends, was at Belmont United Methodist Church in
Nashville. Bishop Ken Carder remembered Harmon, ever
so appropriately, with Matthew 25: “Inasmuch as you have
done it for the least of my sisters and brothers, you have done
it for me.” Dr. Richard Goode of Vanderbilt Divinity School
told stories of their shared work in teaching classes inside the
local maximum-security prison, made up of equal numbers of
prisoners and theology students. The Rev. Janet Wolfe gave
voice in prayer to our wrenching loss of this beautiful soul
from our midst.
We are grateful to share Harmon’s life and death
through this meditation by his good friend David Rainey,
pastor of Bellevue United Methodist Church in Nashville.
“All this is from God, who reconciled us through
Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that
is, in Christ God was reconciling the world, not counting
their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of
reconciliation to us.”
II Corinthians 5:18-19
Today we give thanks for Harmon Wray, for one
who was reconciled to God and to his sisters and brothers,
a marvelous minister of reconciliation, an ambassador for
Christ in our midst, and on behalf of a broken world.
Like you, I have been struggling these last days with
feelings of great sadness and a deep sense of loss. But I am
so glad to be here together with you today, so that we can feel
not only the sadness in our hearts, but the joy, the love and
gratitude which we all share because of Harmon’s life.
Like a number of you, I suspect, I first came to
know Harmon through Edgehill United Methodist Church.
It was 35 years ago that I met him, shortly after I moved to
Nashville. There were things we had in common — our faith,
our age, similar perspectives on a variety of matters, a shared
fondness for icebox lemon pie. I came to know Harmon
because of such coincidences. But I came to love him for
those qualities which I suspect made many of you love him as
well — his gentleness, his openness, his sweetness of spirit.
The longer I knew Harmon the more I respected
him. I respected him for his abilities and his keen intellect,
for his honesty and steadfast commitment to justice, for his
courage and perseverance. But I loved him simply because of
the way I felt in his presence — his kindness, his easiness and
sense of humor, his ready smile, his readiness to give me and
others the benefit of the doubt. In his personal relationships
Harmon was perhaps the least judgmental person I have ever
known. He was, as his friend Mac Davis has described him,
“unique” in the essential sense of that word — he was “one of
a kind.”
If on a personal level Harmon was non-judgmental,
he did have, as we all know, clear opinions and strong feelings
about important things: about how people ought to treat
one another, about the brutality of systems, about the moral
www.Tennessean.com
blindness of otherwise pretty good folks. He was a tenacious
advocate on behalf of the marginalized and especially the
imprisoned. He was prophetic in his readiness to call the
church to repentance, because in so many ways those of us
who claim the Christian faith do not embody the One who
preached good news to the poor and liberty to the captives.
Harmon was never ready to let us get by with that, to let us
forget who we are, nor was he ready to give up on us.
Harmon was prophetic and his vision was
uncompromising. In this we were challenged and instructed
and inspired. But it was his manner with us that made us
love him — his genuine humility and graciousness, his
deep trustworthiness. He was the same yesterday, today,
and tomorrow, in season and out of season, in style and out
of style. There flowed from Harmon a spirit which was
consistent with his ideals and which has helped us envision
— indeed, actually experience — that beloved community
for which he so tirelessly gave himself.
Harmon was from Memphis. He grew up in a
loving home, and anyone who has met his mother Celeste
has a pretty good notion about where his passion for those in
trouble might have come from. She herself is a strong person
of faith and a committed advocate in her own right. We thank
you, Celeste, for sharing Harmon with us. I know you have
heard many stories over these last several days, and told a few,
and will no doubt hear and tell many more. We pray and trust
that the Lord will sustain you in the days to come and in this
loss that no parent can ever imagine bearing.
Harmon loved books — old and new. He read
deeply and widely and understood what he read, including
Barth’s “Dogmatics.” (I gave up when I found out there
were no pictures, but Harmon could understand that stuff.)
When reading, he carefully underlined in several colors and
highlighted and put notes in the margins. To borrow a book
from Harmon was to borrow a course outline. Harmon also
had a great love for music and a broad knowledge of rock and
roll, a great record collection.
As long as I have known Harmon I think he
bought his clothes mostly at a Goodwill store. It was in part
economics, but also his sense of priorities. Yet I think you will
agree that his appearance never suffered. Lots of folks believe
that clothes make the man and such as that. With Harmon,
the man made the clothes. He carried himself well in so many
ways. He was a strikingly handsome guy, and as he aged
his hair and beard gave him an almost regal bearing. I was
jealous. But there was about Harmon no trace of vanity or
self-importance.
Harmon was unfailingly honest and truthful.
He could also be meticulous and at times ever so slightly
compulsive. Mac tells of when they were selling dictionaries
during college. Each salesman filled out a weekly sales report,
and on the report there was a line for “other receipts” beyond
the orders. One week Harmon wrote “11 cents” on that line.
When pressed, he said it reflected the dime and penny he had
found along the road and turned in. Bless his heart.
Harmon liked to get things organized. He liked to
wear jackets and vests because of the pockets. He organized
books, records, people, the food on his plate. Harmon was a
great list maker, and he loved to cross things off his list after
he had done them. In fact, rumor has it that he would add
things to his lists after he had done them, just so he could
have the satisfaction of crossing them off. We are all grateful,
however, that we were on his list and it was not in Harmon to
cross any one of us off.
Unfortunately for him, at one time Harmon, and
I, and various others, and assorted members of the animal
kingdom, not to mention the insect kingdom, lived in a place
we called “Mom’s Boarding House.” No mom who actually
entered that place could ever have been real happy about it.
It was a mess. But in the middle of it somehow Harmon was
able — or forced — to maintain a clean and tidy personal
zone. Even when Bummer the dog became frightened during
a thunderstorm, tore up Harmon’s room, leapt through the
screen of his second-story window and was later discovered
on the porch roof, Harmon was unfazed. He could get
agitated, but he generally saved his agitation for other things.
You know the things.
He became
increasingly drawn
to prison ministry,
to his brothers and sisters
in Christ behind the walls,
and that’s where
his heart was
from then on.
One’s years in college are formative, but Harmon’s
were especially so. They coincided with very significant years
in the Civil Rights Movement, and Harmon’s school was in
Memphis. As some of you know, Harmon was present in
the auditorium that night when Dr. King spoke during the
sanitation workers’ strike. Harmon heard him say “I’ve been
to the mountaintop,” and, especially from that point on, I
think his life was guided by Dr. King’s vision and hope.
Harmon went from college to Duke Divinity
School. He then came to Nashville and began a doctoral
program in ethics at Vanderbilt. Harmon was in many ways
an intellectual and a gifted scholar, but it became harder and
harder for him to focus on writing a thesis. Some of this may
have been his demons. He had very high expectations of
himself. While he was very graceful with others, he was not
always graceful with himself. And he would procrastinate.
He would put off procrastination. It was painful to watch. But
what became clear over time was that Harmon’s Christian
vocation was simply becoming more sharply focused. He
became increasingly drawn to prison ministry, to his brothers
A Witness, continued on page 9
page 4
Give a Gift
Sharing the
Bread of
Life
Sharing the Bread of Life
Hospitality and Resistance
At the Open Door Community
By Peter R. Gathje
Thank you (and thank Peter) for the
modest yet glorious anniversary and its eloquent
record. You put the warmakers to shame, and
vindicate the Beatitudes as our true and only
way, “choosing to be chosen.”
Blessing, gratitude
Daniel Berrigan, S.J.
New York, New York
272 pages
45 photographs
Paperback
$10.00 suggested donation
Open Door Community
910 Ponce de Leon Ave., NE
Atlanta, GA 30306-4212
Hospitality
November-December 2007
Inch by Inch:
Across the Great Northwest
By Murphy Davis
Our idea for our sabbatical this year was pretty
much to try to sit still and spend most of our time writing at
Dayspring Farm. But when Ed Weir asked us to join him in
a trip to Alaska, it took, as Eduard says, about three or four
seconds to say YES!
It really hadn’t ever occurred to us, but what a great
idea! When MaryRuth died in December, Ed Weir decided
to go on with plans for his sabbatical from New Hope House.
A good friend in Atlanta in the anti-death penalty community
easily convinced him that he should include Alaska in his
travel plans, and she helped to make it possible. So when
August finally arrived, we were off (pictures on page 6).
I’ll call him the Weir for simplicity, since I was
travelling with two Eds, for heaven’s sake; in fact, I subtitled
the trip “In which Murphy sets out to discover whether or not
two Eds are really better than one.”
Anyway, the Weir didn’t sit still for long at all. He
visited and spent time at the Open Door; Dayspring Farm;
Celo, North Carolina; Washington, D.C.; Charleston, South
Carolina, and other points north and south. He ended up, as
arranged, in Minneapolis. We flew up to meet him there and
enjoyed a stay with old Koinonia friends Christine and Steve
Clemens and their sons Micah and Zach. From there, we
packed all three of ourselves and all our stuff into a Toyota
Prius for 30 days and more than 6,000 miles. My sister said,
“Don’t tell me about it — you know I’m claustrophobic!”
But after all that time and distance, it’s fair to say we are still
friends!
First stop was the Forest River Hutterite Colony in
North Dakota, to visit Solomon, Sara, and Eleanor Maendel.
This was the first stop where we had to acknowledge that we
hadn’t planned enough time. We were so warmly welcomed
and sent off with boxes and bags of jellies and jams, fruit,
and other helpful items. Solomon and Eleanor along with
Rae Jones promised to visit the Open Door with a truckload
of food before long. We were so moved by such generous
and hospitable friends who have been related to the Georgia
communities since they supported Koinonia during the 1950s
when the local folks were shooting and dynamiting Koinonia
because of their interracial life.
On to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, for a reunion with
dear friends Ched Myers and Elaine Enns and Elaine’s large
loving Mennonite family. It was too much fun to leave, but
on we went after as much talk as we could jam into two days
and all the “farmer’s sausage” we could hold.
When we greeted
the unarmed police officer
in downtown Whitehorse,
he had plenty to say
about trigger-happy police
in the U.S.
On to the spectacular Canadian Rockies. Already,
the trip would have been worth it for the beauty of prairies
and mountains and rich times with friends old and new. But
the Canadian mountains and glacial lakes and rivers took our
breath away. We ventured out onto a glacier, saw lovely flora
and fauna, and soaked in the beauty of it all. And then up the
road were the Northern Rockies — who knew?
The next wonderful surprise was the Yukon
Territory. What a grand place. All I really knew about it was
from “The Cremation of Sam McGee,” the poem by Robert
Service in the high school English texts. And I’m sure that the
winters are harsh and hard. But the summer is glorious and
the mood is relaxed and progressive. Dawson Peaks (a lovely
little haven run by Dave Hett and Carolyn Allen in Teslin)
and Whitehorse, capital of the Yukon Territory on the Yukon
River, were places I’d love to revisit.
When we greeted the unarmed police officer in
downtown Whitehorse, he had plenty to say about triggerhappy police in the U.S. So many folks there wonder how
we can be as violent as we are in the United States and why
in the world we would want the leadership we have! Good
questions all. So there were lots of good conversations about
war, prisons, and the death penalty. I like those folks!
And then there was Alaska. Ah — words fail — but
I’ll give it a try anyway! In Seward we took a daylong boat
trip into Kenai Fjords National Park, where we saw sea otters,
humpback whales, puffins, murres and gazillions of other sea
birds, and maritime glaciers. There were plenty of occasions
for reflection on global warming when we learned about the
Northwestern Glacier, which has receded five miles since
1942, and when we heard about the Stellar sea lions and
harbor seals whose populations have declined 60 percent in
recent years.
Lovely Homer — also on the Kenai Peninsula, across
the ice field from Seward — was the centerpoint of our trip.
Mary Shellman’s sister Janet hosted us, and we came to love
this funky, folksy, artsy little town on Kachemak Bay. Our little
cabin looked over the bay to glaciers, and the waters of the
bay sparkled in the sunlight and the full moon. I used the word
“unbelievable” so often that it became a joke among us.
When we tore ourselves away from Homer we were
on up to Denali National Park. Now, talk about unbelievable!
This is the wildest of wild places (at least of those we are
permitted to visit in a controlled and intentional way), and
I stand in awe of the work of those who are committed to
keeping it wild. More than 6 million acres now constitute an
entire ecosystem for the creatures who make this land their
home.
We saw moose — bulls, cows and calves —
caribou, grizzlies and, wonder of wonders, the mountain was
visible all day. Mount Denali, at 20,320 feet the highest point
in North America, is hidden behind clouds 75 to 80 percent
of the time. To be able to look at this wonder all day was an
immeasurable blessing. I’ve always loved El Shaddai, the
Hebrew name for God that refers to the wild and holy God of
the mountain, but I had never felt it in such an overwhelming
way.
Mount Denali was formerly named for President
William McKinley, who, as one author said, never came to
Alaska and did not care a whit for mountains. For this and
other reasons, the mountain is again known by its rightful
name in the language of the indigenous Athabascan people
— Denali, meaning “the high one.” Eduard and I found
ourselves whispering under our breath again and again,
“Thank you, thank you.” We met people who have been
going there for years to hike, explore and learn more of this
land — named, again by the Athabascans, Alyeska, “the
great land.” In lieu of seeing it, or in addition to seeing it, we
recommend the lovely, award-winning 18-minute film “The
Heartbeats of Denali.”
Our last stop was Anchorage, where we parted ways
with the Weir. From there, Eduard and I flew back to Atlanta,
and the Weir drove to Southern California for a month with
Inch by Inch, continued on page 11
November-December 2007
Hospitality
page 5
Hunger & Gifts: The Jesus Prayer, Part III
God So Loved the World That She Calls Us
to Accountability for Hunger and Eating
By Brother Eduard-the-Agitator Loring
When Eve arrived at her home in
the center of Eden from the “Howdy Do
Crossroads,” she had a sheet wrapped around
her body. Everyone came out to look at her
new attractiveness. The sheet was white as
snow. Eve wore a funny-looking pointed hat
on the top of her head.
She reached down into her backpack
and pulled out apples for everyone. “Not
now!” cried Adam, “it will spoil our appetites.
I have worked in the kitchen all day and have
a wonderful locust and wild honey casserole
for supper. A meal fit for a prophet!”
“Come on. Come on. A little bite
won’t hurt you. A little bite won’t hurt you.”
So everyone joined in a circle and
took a bite and the spoiled appetites became
the hunger for wealth and war.
As the years rolled by like caissons,
hunger for wealth and war spread and
transmogrified into hunger for all sorts of stuff
and experiences, and cruelties, and wealth,
and houses with extra rooms, and big cars and
the hunger to fix personal problems with the
death penalty and repair social problems with
prisons and global problems with domination
and empire.
Yahweh-Elohim was horrified.
“What have we done? What have we done?”
she asked her partners in the Trinity. But, as
a mother possessed by womb-like love, she
refused to give up on one of her favorites of
all creation: folks.
So everyone
joined in a circle
and took a bite and
the spoiled appetites
became the hunger
for wealth and war.
During consultations among the
Trinity, Jesus, who was known to get a little
pissed and impatient with the wealthy and
religious elites, suggested to his mom that
people who eat when they are not hungry, or
do not welcome all to the Welcome Table,
or who use the death penalty and war to
solve their problems should be stunted into
immature boys and girls in aging bodies who
would eat and eat and never feel satisfied.
Upon reflection, or after enough heart attacks,
cancer, and butts so big they can’t sit in the
new speedo winged chariots that fly across
the Dead Sea in two days, they might figure
something is wrong with their way in the
world. Then folks will get right on their knees
in prayer and return to the Welcome Table. At
least, Jesus hoped so.
This little Jewish man also
proposed a Beloved Community of God
for those who would repent and rebuild
a new world in the shell of the old. This
Beloved Community would also be a place
to stage battles against powers, politicians,
corporations, people and places who kept
the hungry from having enough to eat.
The day Jesus made the proposal
was the Sabbath, so Yahweh-Elohim said
she would think about it and let him know
tomorrow, which was about 1,000 years
away. Finally, on Sunday evening, she said,
“Let’s give it a try and see how smart these
folks are.” The Holy Spirit agreed.
As is the custom of God, she sent
prophets to teach us. (For “Life,” as Don
Beisswenger sings, “is just a question of
hermeneutics.”) Let us listen to gifts given
before the executed God came to us, no
room in the inn, no tomb in the earth:
Hosea (4:10) tells the priests that
they have turned from the truth and led
the people into death by telling lies and
misleading the people: “You will eat your
share of the sacrifices, but still be hungry.
You will worship the fertility gods, but still
have no children, because you have turned
away from me to follow other gods.” (GNB)
Micah (6:14a): “You shall eat, but
not be satisfied, and there shall be a gnawing
hunger within you.” (NRSV)
Habakkuk (2:5): “Wealth is
deceitful. Greedy people are proud and
restless — like death itself they are never
satisfied. That is why they conquer nation
after nation for themselves. The conquered
people will taunt their conquerors and show
their scorn for them. They will say, ‘You
take what isn’t yours, but you are doomed!
How long will you go on getting rich by
forcing your debtors to pay up?’ ” (GNB)
The results were disappointing to
the Trinity, especially to the Holy Spirit, who
had to teach Habakkuk how to write. Except
for a few Radical Remnant Communities
on the margins of the camp who worked
hard to follow the Words of the prophets,
most folk kept right on eating and eating and
not being satisfied. The powerful folk kept
pushing and pushing the oppressed ones
from the table.
Exasperated because her special
friends, the hungry ones, could not get
their fair share of bread, Yahweh-Elohim
stentoriously boomed throughout the
universe, “Ain’t they gotta right to the tree of
life?”
“Jesus,” God continued with a
quieter mien, “prophetic warnings and
stirring sermons have their place, but this
fatal injustice has got to be dealt with head
on. I want you to go to Nazareth as a zygote
and gestate for nine
months in Mary’s
womb.”
“MOM??!!!”
“No, no,
no, of course not. I
wouldn’t do that!!!
Don’t forget we’re
Baptist! The Holy
Spirit will just do it,
but only in Mary’s
ear. Then in 30 earth
years, after you get to
know how folk really
handle hunger and
eating, I want you to
get moving on your
Beloved Community
of God Movement
idea. It won’t be long
now till the whole
world will be full,
joyful, and sitting at
the Welcome Table.
Just think, Jesus, no
hunger, no overeating, Stalemate from Dance of Death (1980)
Fritz Eichenburg
no death penalty or
of the human walk down the road of history,
war, no homeless children or grown-ups: just
the human talk through the many volumes
a good ole boogie party after supper. You
of our bloodstained yet, at times, triumphant
remember, don’t you, son? The way it was in
story, like Christ crossed and risen. In the
Eden before Eve and Adam….”
raging ticks and tocks of time we have to find
Just then Yahweh-Elohim looked
our way amid the brambles and nettles in the
down and saw in Woodruff Park a green
ruined cornfields, and through the weevilsnake draped across the Crucifix that the
infested whip-lashed hell of cotton fields
Open Door Community had brought to their
Festival of Shelters celebration. She grimaced. cleared for McMansions and the cannibals
who live therein. And we know the streets of
God looked away from Jesus. Suddenly
the cities of greed and glitter. We hear the cry
anguish flooded her face, like Katrina
inside our cry for the bread of life and when
washing down the yards and through the
homes in the Ninth Ward. Tears dripped from we reach for it, stones, dead like modern life,
stick in our throats, form in our kidneys, and
her cheeks.
we are so overwhelmed by our dry waters
“Oh, Jesus,” she keened, “I love
we can only stand and stare at the TV who
you. I love the world so much. I will give
snickers at us like a snake when the pictures
you to their struggle to share bread and all
of the starving children chide us at our table
shall be satisfied. I don’t want to judge those
filled with food that does not satisfy. Oh, why,
wretches who can’t quit eating and buying
and investing and fighting wars. I want to heal Oh why, in the light or in the dark, have we
who have crossed the land and who walk the
them. Make things right again.”
streets, why have we exchanged our blessings
“Okay, mom,” said her son,” when
for curses and our rights for bowls of fool’s
you wanta get going?”
“What about the end of December?” gold which will not satisfy?
Yahweh-Elohim is the God of
Yahweh-Elohim, the mother of her son asked.
history and happiness. The blood is ours,
but she is willing to bleed with us. She never
Agitator: History is our time with
blindsides us, no never. Were you in the
teeth. Born, thrown into the apple-eating,
nightmare of your beckoning death shocked
snake-slithering world, we make our way
by the terrorist on 9/11? Then you do not
with blood on our hands until there is the
listen to the truth that bleeds in the noonday
knowledge of truth and love in deeds to wash
sun. Were you incredulous when we became
these incarnadine hands which hold history
a nation of torture? The nation that threatens
like a gift wrapped in barbed wire. “Time
human rights over the globe? Then you are
is the fire in which we all burn,” said poet
Delmore Schwartz. We get; we give. We love; dead to the vibrations of history, the wretched
we hate. We welcome; we murder. We are the
ragged ones, beggars for the glory and honor
Hunger & Gifts, continued on page 10
Hospitality
page 6
November-December 2007
Across
the
Great Northwest
By Murphy Davis
(See accompanying article on page 4)
In August, Eduard Loring and I accompanied Ed Weir on a great
expedition to Alaska — by car! Amazing that none of us came away from the
many days and long miles in a very small car any crazier than we already were
(okay, okay, I know that’s debatable!).
The drive meant that we saw some of the most beautiful parts of Canada,
and of
particular note,
the Canadian
Rockies. The
top photo is
Bow Lake, one
of the many
pristine lakes
fed by sparkling
aquamarine
glacial waters.
And every view
is framed with
the ubiquitous magenta fireweed. Breathtaking!
The two center photos are from Seward, Alaska and
the Kenai Fjords National Park. Our day on the boat trip was
enough to bring out all the cold weather gear and I (center) felt
like I was right in the middle of the wildlife! Later, I joined the
throngs of fisherfolk in Seward and pulled in a Big One — too
bad somebody else was already finished with it! I didn’t even
need a fishing license for this.
And imagine our surprise in Anchorage to run right into
Dustin Solberg, a former faithful breakfast volunteer. He writes
for the Alaska Newspapers Co., which publishes six weekly
community newspapers and a statewide magazine. The papers
are owned by a Native Corporation and have helped to unify
Native Communities, especially around issues of Native land
claims.
We come home with a deepened appreciation for all
those who continue to work so diligently to set aside and protect public land and
to tend and advocate for our fragile and troubled environment. The vast beauty we
have seen inspires us to struggle to remember this task day by day.
In, Out & Around 910
Compiled by Calvin Kimbrough
Celebrating 25 Years
of Hospitality
For 25 years our friends at First Presbyterian Church in Milledgeville,
Georgia have been providing lunch each month for the Hardwick Prison
Trip. Church members offer hospitality to the 70 to 90 family members
going to visit loved ones at the Hardwick Prisons. The celebration
began on Saturday, September 15, 2007. Members of the lunch crew
that day posed for a picture (right). It will continue on Sunday morning,
January 20, 2008 when Murphy Davis will preach at Milledgeville First
Presbyterian. The Open Door Community will travel to Milledgeville to
join in the joy. Plan to come and join in the worship that morning!
Tony Sinkfield
November-December 2007
Hospitality
page 7
Thank You!
On August 6, Don Kenne (far left), Lay Leader of the Cookeville
District, Tennessee Conference, the United Methodist Church,
brought shoes to the Open Door Community. The car was
completely crammed full of shoes, front, back and trunk! This
was the second delivery of shoes from the Cookeville District.
In July Dr. Harold Martin, District Superintendent, brought the
first load. We always need good used walking shoes and this
collection of shoes was a wonderful gift.
Calvin Kimbrough
No War!
In September Nelia and Calvin Kimbrough (center) got to visit
at Viva House Catholic Worker in Baltimore, Maryland. Their
first stop with Willa Bickham (left) and Brendan Walsh (right)
was the 9/11 Peace Demonstration in Baltimore. Nelia and
Calvin had a great time helping the folks at Viva House provide
hospitality and visiting with Willa and Brendan. There’s no
better hospitality anywhere then at a Catholic Worker!
Labor Day Picnic
Betsy Lunz (left), who chairs the Open
Door Advisory Board, served hamburgers
to our hungry friends on Labor Day. Athalia
Rodriguez and Dean Graham (below) prepare
chips for the tables. We served 500 folks
hamburgers, chips, baked beans, slaw, iced
tea and watermelon. Thanks to all those who
helped us provide this hospitality.
Photographs by Calvin Kimbrough
Remember, Resist, Rejoice
The Open Door Community celebrated the Festival of Shelters
at Woodruff Park early in October. The festival calls us all to
remember that we are all homeless wanderers in a land that is
not our own, to resist the powers of pride and greed and greed
that create wealth for a few and poverty for many, and to rejoice
that God has given us a harvest of abundant life for all. Tony
Sinkfield (right) serves Ruth Shanks the Eucharist. (Ruth and
Norman Shanks journeyed from Scotland to Atlanta for a time
of teaching at Columbia Theological Seminary.) The Open
Door Community will be publishing a book about the Festival
of Shelters this winter. Watch for it!
Photographs by Calvin Kimbrough
Alan Barr
page 8
Hospitality
Crossing the Line, continued from page 1 got caught. Many of the other prisoners were
convicted of conspiracy, known in the prison
of international military-based dominance
as “ghost drugs.” These are people who were
could continue to be held in our community’s never caught selling drugs, and sometimes
consciousness, leading us all into ongoing
not even possessing drugs. They were
action toward the indwelling of the Beloved
implicated by someone else (who usually
Community.
received a sentence reduction), convicted
Now we should return to the
on this testimony and are incarcerated under
gospel. But we’ll actually look at the very
mandatory minimum-sentencing guidelines.
next passage. After explaining that his
And, after getting myself acclimated
movement will sow division, even within
to some of the intricacies of life at the
families, Jesus says: “Why do you not
Jesup prison, I came to realize gifts with
judge for yourselves the right thing to do? If
which I entered into this situation. You
someone brings a lawsuit against you and
all are of course at the center of this. Your
takes you to court, do your best to settle the
encouragement and support were central to
dispute before you get to court. If you don’t,
assisting me during my incarceration.
you will be dragged before the judge, who
will hand you over to the police, and you will
be put in jail. There you will stay, I tell you,
until you pay the last penny of your fine.”
(Luke 12:57-59) Here Jesus also tells about
what will happen to us when we grow in our
participation with this movement: We’ll go to
court and then to jail.
And I know that God is all-seeing
and all-knowing, but it seems like somebody
“been readin’ my mail,” because we, those
of us arrested during the vigil last November,
were of course all brought to court and sent
to jail.
There is another institution in
Georgia not far south of here. This almost
entirely male environment houses men
from often far away. They wear uniforms.
They learn all sorts of things, in official and
unofficial ways. They constantly prepare for
their return home.
I was incarcerated (like Jesus
promises) for almost my entire 100-day
sentence in the low-security federal satellite
prison in Jesup, Georgia. This institution
houses close to 600 men. I lived in the top
bunk of a three-man cubicle. I worked as part
of the morning food service shift.
This prison also has on its staff a
number of men who trained at Fort Benning.
Of course, right up at the top of the
And at least one inmate was once an
list of those receiving thanks for helping me do
instructor at the School of the Americas.
my time is Amy. She not only had to let me go
Maybe my so-called counselor was and be on her own — things we expected. But
thinking of this man when he offered me
she also had to bury a chicken and buy a house
some advice upon my arrival. Mr. Johnson
— things we hadn’t counted on.
said, “You really shouldn’t tell anybody why
And, as I’ve already mentioned,
you’re here. A lot of the men here are real
I was serving an extremely short sentence
true-blue Americans.” But, even if true-blue, (some would say record-settingly so). I spent
everyone there is being held prisoner by the
no time in a county jail and no time in transit.
American government.
And I knew that I would not be transferred to
I had anticipated some discomfort
another facility.
with more politically conservative prisoners.
One evening, during a softball
But our action was understood as a protest
game, the ever-present loudspeaker system
against our own government’s training
crackled to life. It was not unheard of for
of foreign soldiers, soldiers who act as
“official business” to be conducted in the
terrorists in their home countries. And so I
evenings. But my often-present confusion
received a generally warm, even if confused, grew larger when I realized how many
reception from other prisoners. Additionally,
names were being called to report to the
the men expressed support for standing up
administration building. When I returned to
for what you believe in, acting on those
our room, I saw that one of my cellies was in
beliefs, and receiving the consequences with a state of high agitation. By then I knew why.
steadfastness.
(Word travels fast on the compound.) De
A number of prisoners got a
Los Santos was one of those who would be
chuckle out of my brief sentence. “Hell,”
transferred the next morning.
Shorty told me, “I’ve done more than 100
That night, all of the prisoners
days sitting on the toilet.” He is nearing
facing immigration hearings (even if nonthe end of a 20-year sentence. And he
deportable, like those from Cuba), who had
unflinchingly states that he had drugs and
between 15 months and five years remaining
in prison, were notified that they would be
transferred the next morning. These 20 men
went from a low-security federal prison to
various private prisons, which are often more
like a county jail, having limited outdoor
access and no available programs. Some
were notified that they would be sent to the
Corrections Corporation of America prison
in McRae, Georgia. And none of them were
happy.
My cellie had to pack up the few
things he could take with him and divest
himself of the rest, no small feat for a man
who had been running what seemed to be a
very successful yogurt business. He wasn’t
able to make a phone call to his family in
the Dominican Republic, and he faced a
multiple-day bus trip to somewhere in Texas,
he thought.
While I sat around chatting with
folks, staying out of our space so that my
cellie could prepare for his departure, I was
told that the reason for this mass transfer was
that Fidel Castro had finally died (which of
course turned out to be erroneous). “Yeah,”
this fellow said, “now we’re gonna send
all the Cubans back.” But the real cause for
these prisoners being shipped out is that
running things privately seems cheaper for
the government.
This is a lie the truth of which we
see most clearly in Iraq. Private contractors
mean that our country can fight a war
without a draft. But in addition to their
wild expenses, private corporations are
never accountable to “we the people” and
are focused on profit. And what is true for
private warriors is true for private prisons and
private hospitals.
In addition to living together, my
cellie and I had worked in the same place,
the kitchen. Unlike most of the kitchen
“employees” (which kind of overstates
our role, as we were mostly paid $5.75 per
month), I found that I could do my work
without getting really upset about it or taking
my anger out on the inventory. But I had
previous training for my “job”: cleaning up
after folks who have no other options about
where to eat and getting no pay for it may
sound familiar to some folks here at the
Open Door.
And one of the significant
advantages I had was my faith. I knew why
I was in prison. (Heck, I knew ahead of time
that I was likely going to prison.) And I knew
not only that God would lead me through
that time in safety, but also I could believe
that my presence in prison was part of our
movement toward a world of greater peace
and justice.
Let’s look again at the gospel. Jesus
says that following him will be the cause of
division. Even though I continued to make
my Sunday evening calls to my parents, I
have never been so divided from everyone I
had known. And still, Jesus does not say that
when we follow him we will be alone. In
fact, this message is given to the community
of followers. So, while Jesus predicts this
division from those we have known, the
disciples, for all their doofusy infighting, are
together. And that is something I found as
well. I was not alone.
November-December 2007
As time went on, I became friendly
with a number of the other prisoners. We were
living and often struggling together within
a dehumanizing situation. And so I’ll call
forth some of their names now, making them
present with us today:
Ruby, Jermoir, Mr. Hannah, Paisa,
Fred, the People’s Champ, Neil, Queen, Big
B, JV, Jam Roc, Alex, Ace, Rad-O, 180, Big
Ant, Skye, King Street, Dennis, Don Julio,
Tigre, Chi-chi, Mitch, Joe Dirt, Pop, Castro,
Derek.
I often felt during my time there that
we were together on this journey. And, as they
all helped me understand the reality of our
incarceration, I was sometimes able to offer
them a glimpse of another way to live.
This way of life, following Jesus,
also leads us into prisons. But hopefully we
enter into this conflict with authority aware.
We do so because we have had a chance to
see which way the wind blows. And we are
called to do what is right, recognizing the
costs.
Yet we know that we will be
supported, not only by Jesus but by our
sisters and brothers in the movement. And
certainly, during my time in the pokey, I
was uplifted by so many of you here; in
prayer, through visitation, and especially with
correspondence.
Mail was distributed Monday
through Friday just before the 4 p.m. standingup count. The housing unit guard would stand
out front and call the name of each recipient.
Often the same folks would get mail. For
instance, somebody who subscribes to a
newspaper can know that his name will be
called every day. But somebody just hoping
for a letter may wait a long time.
Only one day during my
incarceration did I not get any mail. And most
days I got quite a bit. In fact, I’ve brought
most of the postcards sent by folks from the
Open Door with me tonight. And it’s quite a
stack! So, many of the other prisoners rapidly
got to know who I was. “Yeah, that’s the guy
who gets all the mail.” And this too offered an
avenue to talk with some people about why
I got so much mail and also the cause for my
incarceration.
But plenty of prisoners knew only
that I got a lot of mail. They would hear my
name repeated again and again during mail
call.
One day, even the guard distributing
the mail got curious. He didn’t really want to
talk about why I was getting so much mail,
but he did say, “Where is this guy? I gotta see
what he looks like.” I identified myself and
the fellow standing next to me said, “Kinda
a disappointment, isn’t it?” Everybody had a
good laugh, something fortunately not all that
uncommon.
And even the calling of my name
was occasionally a difficulty. When Amy and
I got married a few years ago, we each added
the other’s family name to our own, making
Vosburg-Casey. At the prison I got called
Vosburg, or Casey, rarely both, not to mention
a few of my nicknames: “Groovy,” “VW,”
“V,” “Hippie” or “Amish.” During mail call, I
Crossing the Line, continued on page 11
November-December 2007
Hospitality
A Witness, continued from page 3
source of great delight and comfort. Our wonderfully loving
Siamese cat Sweetie could evoke such love, vulnerability, and
playfulness in Harmon, it reduced him to sweet mush.
The day after he died someone found a recent note
he had written, apparently composed at a conference. It
was titled “Things I Love to Do.” The list included an entry
which read “talk with Judy — love is wonderful,” and then,
“Experiencing my feelings is hard, but worthwhile. Listening
is hard, but important.”
Though not naturally given to the romantic, he once
wrote a large stack of small cards, each one listing one thing
he loved about me, and hid them in places all over the house
where, much to my delight, I gradually found them all.
I will miss him dearly.
and sisters in Christ behind the walls, and that’s where his
heart was from then on.
As many of you know, Harmon never received the
title of “doctor.” He was never formally ordained, for that
matter. But we all know who Harmon was. There was never
a more natural or compassionate pastor than Harmon Wray.
And it’s hard to imagine a wiser or more committed teacher, a
truer theologian. How many he has taught by his deeds even
more than his words! How broad his sense of the academy.
How many his colleagues — free and incarcerated.
I think that if Harmon had been asked to point to his
credentials, he might simply have pointed to his certificate
of baptism. For his commission, he took his lead from his
beloved mentor Will Campbell and from II Corinthians 5. He
had a ministry of reconciliation. He no longer saw anyone
simply from a human point of view.
Harmon was one of a kind. So unique that his
sense of calling often did not match up with anyone’s job
description. That was not Harmon’s fault, but it meant that
he was marginalized as far as the job market was concerned.
He was not bitter, but it was regrettable that he had to spend
energy worrying about grants, how he was going to support
himself, his health insurance. Regrettable for him and also
for all those whom he might have served otherwise. Harmon
continued his ministry regardless, because it was never about
a job. It was about who he was, and who his Lord was.
In this room several years ago, I think it was Bishop
Reuben Job who described the late Pastor Dick Allison. He
said about Dick that “he knew himself to be no more and no
less than a child of God.” So it was, I believe, with Harmon.
And I think it describes how Harmon saw everyone else. No
more, no less, than children of God.
To think of Harmon is, for many of us, to think
about both Harmon and Judy together and to celebrate their
long, loving, committed partnership. I asked Judy to write
something for us about their relationship. The following are
some of her words, under the heading “My Harmon”:
Harmon and I met in the fall of 1971 when Edgehill
Church held a series of meetings on alternative lifestyles. We
soon began dating, and Edgehill quickly became a central
part of our lives and commitments. The richly varied makeup
of membership and common spiritual and ethical values drew
us there regularly.
Different as we were by nature and by style, at the
core of what really mattered Harmon and I were extremely
similar. His active love and care for the men at the prison
pervaded his life and greatly enriched mine also. What I most
loved about Harmon was that he loved those who society
said were unlovable. He heard their struggles and saw their
goodness. He sought to give voice to the disenfranchised and
the wounded. For me, my work as a psychotherapist was a
rich and rewarding calling, so it seemed that we were two
sides of the same coin.
No ordinary saint, [Harmon] relished the humor of
life. Music was in his Memphis soul, and the written word,
from Doonesbury to theology, held life for him.
A favorite pastime for us was to head out on a
Saturday morning to some rural part of the country, hunt
waterfalls and woods, and visit tiny country towns. Harmon
could engage a door in interesting conversation.
Harmon was a Southerner to the core. It was some
time before I could get [him] north of the Mason-Dixon line,
but after our first visit to Maine, he too fell in love with New
England and it became a treasured part of our lives and
annual travels.
Harmon often had a devilish sense of humor and
could be delightfully foolish at times. I recall one night when
I was trying to teach [him] how to whistle that we got to
laughing so hard I fell off the bed we were sitting on.
He was tender with animals, and our series of
pets through the years, most of which adopted us, were a
page 9
Join us as a
Resident Volunteer
Thank you, Judy, for sharing these things with us
today.
“Two sides of the same coin.” Together Harmon
and Judy have been marvelous friends to so many of us. They
have been extended family to Tish and me and our children,
lovingly present at so many important points in our lives. We
have all been richly blessed by this fine match.
I think it was
Will Campbell
who once said,
“I don’t know much,
but I suspect a lot.”
Will knows plenty, of course,
but I have always
been encouraged
by his holy suspicions.
Our love goes out to Judy in these raw and
wrenching days. After the death of her brother, Susan
Wiltshire wrote, “The Cherokees have a term for what my
brother was to me: ‘He was my other wing.’ ” What is beyond
suddenly missing our other wing? We grasp for ways to
understand what has happened to Harmon and where he is
now and what will happen to us without him, at least without
him as we have known him.
Here, of course, is the great leap. In John’s Gospel,
Jesus promises his disciples a Comforter, a Friend, an
Advocate. In faith we trust that somehow the comfort we
need will come in the days ahead. We cannot yet see how, but
because of Harmon himself we at least know what it means to
have a friend and an advocate.
I think it was Will Campbell who once said, “I don’t
know much, but I suspect a lot.” Will knows plenty, of course,
but I have always been encouraged by his holy suspicions.
Our suspicions today are about a Christ who
has been crucified and thus shares in and understands our
suffering. That was important to Harmon. But our suspicions
are also about a Christ who has been raised from the dead.
Our suspicions are that love and life are stronger than death.
So let us entrust Harmon and ourselves to this holy mystery.
Poet Wendell Berry says, “Be joyful though you
have considered all the facts.”
Let us indeed be joyful today because of the
victory of God’s love! Let us be joyful because we have
been truly blessed by a wonderful friend and teacher, a man
of uncommon integrity and grace. We were not ready to let
him go, and we will miss him something fierce. But we will
always be thankful for him, and we will not forget him. With
God’s help we may even be more like him.
Thanks be to God for Harmon! Now welcomed into
a new creation beyond even his wildest dreams. >
Calvin Kimbrough
Emily and Harley Hayden have been volunteering with
us for quite a while. They have moved in for a couple of
months and they say you don’t have to be a Boston Red
Sox fan to be an Open Door Resident Volunteer. They
think a willing heart will do fine.
Live in a residential Christian community.
Serve Jesus Christ and
the hungry, homeless, and imprisoned.
Join street actions and
loudandloving non-violent demonstrations.
Enjoy regular retreats and
meditation time at Dayspring Farm.
Join Bible study and
theological reflections from the Base.
You might come to the margins and
find your center.
Contact: Phil Leonard
at [email protected]
or 770.246.7625
For information and application forms
visit www.opendoorcommunity.org
Turkeys Turkeys Turkeys
Leo McGuire
The Open Door Community needs
turkeys to serve for our
Thanksgiving (Friday, November 23) and
Christmas (Wednesday, December 26) Meals!
Turkeys already cooked and sliced
are most helpful.
page 10
this year give
HOSPITALITY
A $7 donation covers a year’s
worth of Hospitality for a prisoner,
a friend, or yourself. To give the
gift of Hospitality, please fill out,
clip, and send this form to:
Open Door Community
910 Ponce de Leon Ave., NE
Atlanta, GA 30306-4212
___Please add me (or my friend) to the
Hospitality mailing list.
___Please accept my tax deductible
donation to the Open Door Community.
___I would like to explore a six- to
twelve-month commitment as a
Resident Volunteer at the Open Door.
Please contact me. (Also see www.
opendoorcommunity.org for more
information about RV opportunities.)
name__________________________
address ________________________
_______________________________
_______________________________
email___________________________
phone__________________________
volunteer
needs
at the
Open Door Community
People to accompany Community
members to doctors’ appointments.
Groups or individuals to make
individually wrapped meat and
cheese sandwiches (no bologna
or pb&j, please) on whole-wheat
bread for our homeless and hungry
friends.
People to cook or bring supper for
the Community on certain Monday,
Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday
evenings.
Volunteers for Monday and Tuesday
breakfasts and for Wednesday and
Thursday soup kitchens.
Volunteers to help staff our foot
clinic on Thursday evenings.
For more information,
contact Chuck Harris at
[email protected]
or 770.246.7627
Hospitality
November-December 2007
Hunger & Gifts, continued from page 5
echoes of the poor and suffering abandoned ones. Blood
from hunger not satisfied seeps into the ground: greed, guts
gone grassy, war, death penalty, homelessness, homophobia,
white supremacy … to eat and eat and eat and still be empty,
ah, friends, this is hell. Is there an exit? An Exodus? And now
we watch and walk upon the good land and the scientists
tell us the earth has rebelled against our land grabbing
and grubbing. We are dying in the age of the Ecological
Catastrophe in the Apocalyptic Time Zone.
And I say by fact and faith, God does not blindside
us. She gives stories of delight to light our path unto salvation.
She gives laws so that we may know the truth and thus live
together in Shalom. She sends prophets and poets, miracles,
and messages in dreams. No. We are without excuse! To be
oblivious to the blood on our hands — to eat and eat while
babies’ bellies are bloated with hunger — this is to shrink into
the shape and sound of a ravenous baboon. Yahweh-Elohim
loves us so much, hurts so much, she comes today into the
lands East of Eden to wash our hands and fill our plates.
There are no surprises, no blindsiding. History is the
story of our life together. The gospel of grace is the gospel of
accountability and the consequentiality of human hormoned
history. God loves us; won’t give up; calls us to repent. She
will never leave us alone. She will never surprise us with
historical disaster. Historical calamities come announced,
along with the broken heart of God clamoring as the boot
heels clang and the roadside bomb blasts the babies. Slavery
was a thousand years in the making. (Many well connected
tax cutters knew the reports of the sick bridge over the mighty
Mississippi before the cars plunged, riders screaming, to their
lung-soaked, strangling deaths in the muddy, debris-filled
waters below.)
Goodnews! Because God so loved the world, she
joins us in blood and glory! God calls us to accountability for
the walk we walk and the stories we tell: the wars we make,
the poverty we produce, the Ecological Catastrophe we emit
into earth, sky and sea, the poems we write, the dances we
dance, the meals we share. Yahweh-Elohim, our Creator and
Liberator/Redeemer, made us with the gift of consequentiality:
We meet ourselves in history and the tale of earth-care. God is
Judge.
Listen to Langston Hughes’ poem “Final Curve”:
When you turn the corner
And you run into yourself
Then you know that you have turned
All the corners that are left.
So what is next?
The alternative to the doom and filthy fate of Adam
and Eve and all God’s children who eat and are not satisfied,
or cannot eat and are starving, is always before us. The road
less traveled that will reform our transmogrified appetites
is here and now. A Way, a Truth, a Life by which we may
reorder our lives in love, a journey of redemption from the pit
of the domination system, eating at the Welcome Table, even
here East of Eden: “Repent,” preaches Jesus on the streets,
in the prisons, and beside you, on your left, “for the Beloved
Community of God has come near.” (Matthew 4:17b NRSV,
adapted by ODC.) Join the movement! Be a disciple of Jesus,
the Human One. Eat well. Be satisfied!
Hunger and eating are the essential gifts of God and
the core of our life together. We eat at the Welcome Table. We
fight like hell against all powers and principalities that cause
hunger.
Now, the next thing I would like to write is … Oh,
excuse me. Lauren just rang the supper bell. Time to circle up. >
Eduard-the-Agitator Loring is a Partner at the Open Door
Community. This concludes a three-part series.
School of the Americas Watch
November
16-18, 2007
Ted Stein | www.ResistanceMedia.org
Converge on
Fort Benning, Georgia
Human Rights Defenders from across the
Americas will gather at the gates of
Fort Benning to speak out for justice, dignity
and reconciliation.
www.soaw.org
SOA Watch
Benefit Concert
Thursday
November 15, 2007
7:30 PM
featuring
Holly Near, emma’s revolution,
Rising Appalachia, Prince Myshkins,
Charlie King, Francisco Herrera, Jon Fromer,
M.U.G.A.B.E.E., Anne Feeney, Chris Chandler,
Colleen Kattau, and others
with Emcees Elise Witt & Dave Lippman, a.k.a.
George Shrub, the Singing CIA Agent.
eyedrum gallery
Atlanta, Georgia
www.soaw.org
www.eyedrumgallery.org
Recommended Reading
Lightning East to West
Jesus, Gandhi,
and the Nuclear Age
By James W. Douglass
ISBN: 1-59752-610-X
Wipf and Stock Publishers
112 pages / $12.00
Hospitality
November-December 2007
Crossing the Line, continued from page 8
responded to any of those.
Let’s take one more look at the gospel. Jesus teaches
that following him will lead us away from our birth families
and that it won’t always be good times. Check.
But we are also called on to pay attention to what’s
happening around us in the world: Watch the sky; read the
signs of the times. And then we’re to act on those signs.
Though we are also promised that the power system will then
bring us into court and send us away to jail.
We can see that our country is torturing prisoners at
Guantanamo. And so we act to shut it down. We know Grady
Hospital is the only place where poor folks can go in Atlanta
to receive medical care. So we act to preserve this life-saver.
By crossing over a simple property line onto the
grounds of Fort Benning in demonstration of my opposition
to the continued presence of the formerly-called School of
the Americas there, I have hoped to dramatize the conflict
between my life as a resister of war and our country’s ongoing
expansionist militarism. I don’t expect to, like Jesus says, “set
the world on fire.” But I have felt this flame kindled in me. So
I have had to act. And hope to have done so faithfully in this
small way.
St. Francis can also inform us here at the close of the
words, imploring, “Start by doing what’s necessary; then do
what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.”
We start by acting in resistance to the School of
Assassins. Then we succeed in achieving its closure. And
suddenly we are living on the road to a new life of resistance
to the powers, a new life of faithfulness in servanthood to one
another, a new life of justice and peace. >
Grace and Peaces of Mail
Dear Ed, Murphy and friends,
Thanks, Ed, for being you! And thank you
so much for the recent article “The Jesus Prayer, Part
II” (Hospitality, September-October 2007). I just
read it aloud in bed to Sue, just back from three days
in the hospital with a bad cellulitis infection (part of
the fun of being a cancer survivor; like I need to tell
you about that!). It was just what the doctor ordered!
And something only Eduard-the-Agitator could have
written.
Blessings and much love,
Wes Howard-Brook
Seattle, Washington
Wes Howard-Brook is the author of “Becoming Children of
God: John’s Gospel and Radical Discipleship,” “Unveiling
Empire: Reading Revelation Then and Now” (with Anthony
Gwyther) and several other books.
Dear Brother Eduard-the-Agitator Loring,
Last night randomly picked up the Hospitality
which was beside the bed, which turned out to be
one I had already read (June-July), but which I read
again because it was there. In re-reading your article
on thirst, I wondered if you know the Sufi poet Hafiz.
Battle’s favorite of Hafiz’s poems (translation by
Daniel Ladinski) is:
First the fish must say,
“Something ain’t right about this camel ride,
And I am so damn thirsty.”
www.soaw.org
Inch by Inch, continued from page 4
daughter Dawn, her Joe, and their five children. He left
Alaska equipped with a moose puppet for his storytelling
adventures with his grandchildren. And we stayed on for
another day with friends Bill Pelke and Kathy Harris.
Bill is the founder of the Journey of Hope, the
travelling witness of the families of murder victims who
witness against the death penalty, and they are both active
in Alaskans Against the Death Penalty (their motto for their
annual fund-raiser is “Fry Fish Not People”). We happened
to be in town just in time for their monthly meeting, and we
loved meeting these folks who actively work against the death
penalty in a state that long ago abolished it. Of course, with
the federal death penalty, every state is now a death penalty
state.
But what a shock it was to get out of Bill and
Kathy’s car in downtown Anchorage and hear someone yell,
“Ed and Murphy!?” Were we back in Atlanta? Who else
did we know in Anchorage? It was Dustin Solberg, a former
volunteer at the Open Door breakfast! (see photograph on
page 6) Turns out that when he left Atlanta and finished a
master’s in environmental science, he went to work as a
journalist for The Alaskan, a newspaper distributed in small
towns and rural areas of the state. We had a happy reunion
and all took pictures before hurrying off to meet with the
abolitionists. Just one more reminder that living at the Open
Door makes it a small world out there.
Eduard and I are happily back at Dayspring Farm
for the remainder of the year. Then we’re back into the full life
of the Open Door Community. For the stillness and the travel,
we are more than grateful. And the writing? Well, I heard
Eduard on the phone the other day as he said, “Her writing?
Well, I think she’s having too much fun right now to get much
writing done.” What is it they say? Something to the effect of
if you want to make God laugh, just try making plans. >
Murphy Davis is a Partner at the Open Door Community.
page 11
I think that is pretty much what you were discussing.
Amy Dawn Harwell
Nashville, Tennessee
Dear Open Door Friends,
Thank you for remembering our friend John
Hightower in the August 2007 issue of Hospitality
(“Inch by Inch”).
Regards,
Barry Burnside
Kalamazoo, Michigan
Barry and Esther Burnside were for many years partners at Koinonia Partners in Americus. Barry visited
on Georgia’s death row.
Dear staff at the Open Door,
I am thankful that I had the opportunity and
experience of serving the homeless at the Open Door
clinic in 2004-05. While drowning in the books to
study for exams in med school, Open Door helped me
open my eyes and my heart to people, the very essence
of why I want to be a doctor. The fellowship with
Hannah, Ed, Murphy, Tony, Ralph, Barbara, Lauren,
Nelia, Calvin, Chuck and the numerous others also
giving back to the community is priceless, and I will
always remember the warmth and good-heartedness
of you all. I received an award at med school dean’s
reception mostly for the work I did at Open Door, and
I just want to share some of the grant money with you
to help sustain the medical clinic and improve it.
Take care, and God bless you,
Joyce Au
Brooklyn, New York
Joyce Au was Co-Coordinator of our Medical Clinic
during her second year at Emory University School of
Medicine.
Amy is a former Resident Volunteer at the Open
Door Community and works as a public defender
in Nashville. Her husband, Battle Beasley, is an
Episcopal priest and their daughter Zaiea is a very
busy pre-schooler.
Dear Open Door,
Thank you so much for sending along the
book order so quickly! I have been reading them every
day for a month. Right now I am in graduate school
(comparative literature) at SUNY Binghamton, but I
would love to visit you when I am home (Augusta)
for the winter break. My area of study is Marxist
discourse and contemporary resistance movements, so
your particular work interests me greatly. As a lifelong
Catholic, I have heard of few things more fabulous
than a Protestant Catholic Worker house. I also have
not heard of anything so wonderful as simply giving a
person a vitamin with a breakfast meal.
Enclosed is $10 that fell out of one of the
books you sent me, and a bunch of men’s socks.
Two other packages should also be arriving, each
containing a pair of men’s walking shoes. Hopefully
they will all find their way to you. Thank you again.
I am sure I will be meeting you soon. As I read the
materials you sent, I said to myself, “There is no
going back to life as usual now, my dear!”
Much love and God’s blessings,
Lauren Boasso
Binghamton, New York
“Many people say it is insane to resist the system, but
actually it is insane not to.”
Mumia Abu Jamal
Annuciation
Rita Corbin
Prison sentences in Georgia have nothing to
do with justice. If they did, a young black man named
Billy Mitchell and I would have received the same
sentence. Both of us were convicted of “Murder.” I
received a life sentence and made parole many years
ago, and Billy was executed on September 1, 1987.
I remember a man from South Georgia named
Hoyt — I forget his last name. He was the son of a
well-liked funeral director, so Hoyt was not bothered
by dead people. After serving several years in prison
for a crime, Hoyt got out, went back home and killed
his cousin (a deputy sheriff) on the courthouse steps.
Hoyt’s cousin had testified against him at his trial.
For killing his cousin, Hoyt was sentenced to death.
Later while in prison, Hoyt told me how much it cost
his father (in payment to the then-governor) to get his
sentenced commuted to life in prison.
Charles
A former Prisoner in Georgia
Hospitality
page 12
November-December 2007
Open Door Community Ministries
Breakfast & Sorting Room: Monday and Tuesday, 6:45 – 8 a.m.
Showers & Sorting Room: Wednesday and Thursday, 8 a.m.
Soup Kitchen: Wednesday and Thursday, 11 a.m. – 12 noon.
Use of Phone: Monday and Tuesday, 6:45 a.m. – 8:15 a.m.
Wednesday and Thursday, 9 a.m. – 12 noon.
Harriet Tubman Medical and Foot Care Clinic:
Thursday, 6:45 - 9 p.m.
Clarification Meetings: some Tuesdays, 7:30 – 9 p.m.
Weekend Retreats: Four times each year for our household,
volunteers and supporters.
Prison Ministry: Monthly trip to prisons in Hardwick, Georgia,
in partnership with First Presbyterian Church of Milledgeville;
The Jackson (Death Row) Trip; pastoral visits in various jails
and prisons.
We are open…
Sunday: We invite you to worship with us at 5 p.m., and join
us following worship for a delicious supper.
We are open from 9 a.m. until 4 p.m. for donations.
Monday through Thursday: We answer telephones from 9 a.m.
until 12 noon and from 2 until 6 p.m. We gratefully accept
donations from 9 until 11 a.m. and 2 until 8:30 p.m.
Friday and Saturday: We are closed. We are not able to offer
hospitality or accept donations on these days.
Our Hospitality Ministries also include visitation and letter
writing to prisoners in Georgia, anti-death penalty advocacy,
advocacy for the homeless, daily worship and weekly Eucharist.
Join Us for Worship!
We gather for worship and Eucharist at 5 p.m. each Sunday, followed by supper together.
Our worship space is limited, so if you are considering bringing a group
please contact us at 770.246.7628. Please visit www.opendoorcommunity.org
or call us for the most up-to-date worship schedule.
November 4
Worship at 910
Eucharist Service
November 11 Worship at 910
Eucharist Service
November 18 No Worship at 910
join us for the SOA Watch at Ft. Benning, Georgia (see page 10)
November 25 Worship at 910
Eucharist Service
December 2
Advent Worship at 910
Eucharist Service
December 7-9 Advent Retreat at Dayspring Farm
(No Worship at 910)
December 16 Advent Worship at 910
Eucharist Service
December 23 Advent Worship at 910
Service of Lessons and Carols
December 24 6:00 p.m. Christmas Eve Eucharist and Supper
Monday
(please call ahead if you would like to join us)
December 30 Christmas Worship at 910
Eucharist Service
The Eucharist
table at
Woodruff Park
for the 2007
Festival of
Shelters.
we need sandwiches
meat & cheese
on wheat
Plan to join us for
discussion and reflection!
Daniel Nichols
For the latest information and
scheduled topics, please call
404.874.9652
or visit
www.opendoorcommunity.org.
Harriet Tubman
Medical Clinic
Needs of the Community
Personal Needs
❏ shampoo (full size)
❏ shampoo (travel size)
❏ lotion (travel size)
❏ toothpaste (travel size)
❏ combs & picks
❏ hair brushes
❏ lip balm
❏ soap
❏ multi-vitamins
❏ disposable razors
❏ deodorant
❏ vaseline
❏ shower powder
❏ Q-tips
We meet for clarification
on selected Tuesday evenings
from 7:30 - 9 p.m.
Medicine Needs List
Calvin Kimbrough
Living Needs
❏ jeans
❏ men’s work shirts
❏ men’s belts (34” & up)
❏ men’s underwear
❏ socks
❏ reading glasses
❏ walking shoes
(especially 9 ½ and up)
❏ T-shirts (L, XL, XXL,
XXXL)
❏ baseball caps
❏ MARTA cards
❏ postage stamps
❏ trash bags
(30 gallon, .85 mil)
Clarification Meetings
at the Open Door
Food Needs
❏ turkeys
❏ hams
❏ sandwiches
❏ quick grits
Special Needs
❏ backpacks
❏ single bed
mattresses
❏ double or
queen bed
❏ bed pillows
ibuprofen
lubriderm lotion
cough drops
non-drowsy allergy tablets
cough medicine (alcohol free)
Foot Care Clinic
epsom salt
anti-bacterial soap
shoe inserts
corn removal pads
exfoliation cream (e.g., apricot scrub)
pumice stones
foot spa
cuticle clippers
latex gloves
nail files (large)
toenail clippers (large)
medicated foot powder
antifungal cream (Tolfanate)
We are also looking for
volunteers
to help staff our
Foot Care Clinic
on Thursday evenings!
From 11 a.m. until 2 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday, our attention is focused on serving the soup kitchen and household lunch. As much as we appreciate
your coming, this is a difficult time for us to receive donations. When you can come before 11 a.m. or after 2 p.m., it would be helpful. THANK YOU!