Gloria Dei

My faith is deepened and strengthened by being a member of Gloria Dei. Having a church home is a gift in my life, and it came to me after trying to live a spiritual life without a church. Simply put, that didn’t work! But this church is not just a safe haven to heal from past hurts. It is a vibrant, outgoing community that does not limit its life and love to geographic, cultural or even religious boundaries. Members are not afraid to extend a welcoming hand to newcomers, to people who look or live differently than the local norm, and we are not afraid to go out and visit and learn from one who seems a stranger. That can mean many faces and places – Dorothy Day, Cabrini Green, Hmong family members adjusting to American life, Guatemala, a Jewish-Christian-Muslim dialogue – the opportunities abound.

San Lucas Toliman Mission in Guatemala is one place where being a Gloria Dei member has increased my faith. I would never have visited on my own, but going as part of a familiar community gave me the courage to step outside my comfort zone. Even so, I resisted the welcome, until I discovered connections I never imagined. Two thousand miles from home, and I found more connections than when I go to the Minnesota State Fair.

• Connections with my past: to Father Greg Shaffer who had visited my high school class in the mid-1960’s and to Father John Francis Brandes, a friend of my dad.
• Connections with the people of San Lucas. Although there are cultural differences, there are also similarities. I have learned over time not to romanticize their culture or situation, but to respect it and learn from it, and to put some of the “good stuff ” I learn from them into practice in my own life.
• Connections with members of Gloria Dei. Some wonderful friendships that started in Guatemala are now flourishing in Minnesota!

There have been some breath-taking encounters with the Spirit in San Lucas. We’ve heard hundreds of children singing hymns without books or instruments. We’ve witnessed the elderly coming to church sometimes barefoot, kneeling on hard wooden kneelers. We are touched by the embrace of the Hernandez family. After they’ve shared a fiesta with us, filled with laughter at our attempts to cross language barriers of English, Spanish and the Cakchiquel Indian dialect, the family prepares for the walk home over dark cobblestone streets. But before departure, the Hernandez family encircles our group and begins to pray.

They don’t recite a memorized prayer. They pray spontaneously, from the heart, and the words tumble over us, in Spanish, in Cakchiquel. We recognize a few words, and our names. They pray for our safe journey, they give thanks for our presence, they pray for Dr. Mike’s continued recovery, they pray for specific needs that they have learned about our group during our visit. We listen quietly and absorb what we can, trusting that we are being lifted up in this conversation they are having with God. It is humbling, touching and hard to describe.

I remember one powerful meeting-up with the Spirit came with a total stranger. Pastor Susan, Dr. Mike, and I had set out in a truck to provide dental care on a finca (a share-cropping farm where families get by in bleak conditions in exchange for their labor). Chickens wandered in and out of the families’ one-room, dirt-floor shacks, and the children were dressed in donated t-shirts, a sign that the family could not afford the colorful textile fabrics woven by local women. While the dental care was performed, I was to keep the children occupied. My usual instinct would be to rely on Pastor Susan, who actually knows what to do around children! But she was now a “dental technician,” holding a flashlight as teeth were extracted from infected mouths. (She, too, was taking risks and venturing out of her comfort zone!)

The “stranger” I met was Robert, a 10 year old boy. I could see he was a leader among the children. He made me feel welcome, even though he spoke no English and I knew very little Spanish. Without his help, I think I would have been lost. Robert and I became a team. Together we devised hand signals and consulted my tiny dictionary as we gathered the children for a game of catch. For several hours we played with a hacky sack ball, and I relaxed. They were no longer poverty-stricken waifs, they were just kids looking for some diversion on a long afternoon. I saw them now as people, not statistics. Their parents, who wanted a better life for their kids, later chose to leave the relative security of the finca and trust God to provide an answer. The mission responded by finding them land, and now they are living better, freer lives. I know that Gloria Dei’s contributions to the mission helped improve the lives of an entire community. San Lucas Mission itself, while it has received many donations over the years, also extends a welcoming hand, as it did in the case of the people of the finca. They reach out to neighbors in need. Within the community, San Lucas Mission acknowledges Mayan cultural traditions as it builds a Christian faith life. The mission welcomes not just Catholic visitors, but welcomes us Lutherans, not as outsiders, but as cherished guests. Returning from these trips to Guatemala, I am welcomed again into the community that first welcomed me exactly twenty years ago. In 1986, without knowing me or my story, a Gloria Dei Usher, invited me to come and share in the meal – a communion that seemed so far up the aisle that I couldn’t tell that the silver “root beer barrel” was in fact a tray for communion cups. It didn’t matter to him that I had stumbled into this church for the first time, after years of uncertainty and sporadic, unguided searching. He didn’t check for an I.D. card or ask me to take a stand on a divisive issue. He simply invited me to “join us at the table.” How could I resist?

As I became familiar with the routines, I was again hungry for new experiences and willing to take a little bit of risk in order to learn more about others – and myself. Each time I grow – through encounters in various ministries. The experiences that challenge me the most are the ones that lead me to grow the most. Pastor Susan has preached about “loving the questions.” When I know I am a child of God, I become less afraid to embrace the questions that arisein my faith life. I haven’t yet read Andrew Sullivan’s A Conservative Soul, but I did read a Time magazine review of it that highlights his description of God being outside of our small boundaries - Time Oct 1 – “When Not Seeing is Believing:” “We have Scripture; we have reason; we have religious authority; we have our own spiritual experiences of the divine. But there is still something we will never grasp, something we can never know – because God is beyond our human categories.” This Gloria Dei community is my family, my home, my source of comfort when I need that, but also Gloria Dei encourages me to venture outside my comfort zone, especially when I become too comfortable. Being an introvert, sometimes it only takes a stranger to put me outside that zone! But here’s what I’ve learned: Being open to others is a way of expanding our vision. Gloria Dei is both a welcome home and a jumping-off place to reach out to others. Welcome the stranger and we meet ourselves, and God.

PRAYER: Heavenly Father, we have been richly blessed in our congregation. Give us a generous heart towards the strangers we meet in our lives. Let us be warm and welcoming and mindful that we, too, were once strangers at Gloria Dei. In the strong
name of Jesus. Amen.