Gender

This year for Lent, my local congregation planned an overall theme titled, “God's Great Reversal.” In that spirit I chose to reflect on a subtext of reversal that I have experienced from emptiness to fullness… or how I have called it, glass half emptiness to an ongoing process of filling.

Imagine you are pregnant for the first time. You are excited. You’ve been trying to have a baby for a while now. Overall, you just want a smooth, uncomplicated pregnancy, however, deep inside you hope that the baby is a girl or a boy. Why do you hope that she is a girl or hope that he is a boy? 

“You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored?"- Matthew 5:13 

Storm Ana in Malawi 

At least four people have died and dozens are missing after strong winds and heavy downpours wreaked havoc in Malawi and Mozambique as Tropical Storm Ana made landfall on Monday.

Make me to know your ways, O Lord; teach me your paths. - Psalm 25:4

Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying. But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.” But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing.

“Sí es cierto lo que dices Melissa… yes, it’s certain what you say,” he says to me in a WhatsApp voice message, “The LGBTQ community is even more vulnerable [than other migrants].”

Pastor Samuel sighs with a weariness in his voice, messaging me from his home in Ciudad Juarez after a long day out in his truck bringing food and blankets to asylum-seekers.

In the fall, we gifted our outgoing Board Chair with a snow globe featuring the nativity scene with Mary, Joseph and Jesus. As the present was unwrapped, someone around the table – reflecting on the nature of our work to address the lack of safe, specialized and supportive housing for trafficked survivors –  commented,“They didn’t have anywhere to go either.”

Part 2 of Sharing Stories: Mary Robinson, Climate Change and Us.  Find Chapter 2 in Robinson's book and read with us.