Retreat 2001 - Bead Craft for retreat participants
HIV/AIDS Outreach Ministry
|
Retreat 2001 - Bead Craft for retreat participants |
|
The Candle
of Hope on a church's altar is a symbol of our congregation's concern
and our hope for our sisters and brothers who have diseases that are
presently considered incurable, and especially HIV/AIDS. It is lit each
Sunday to remind us of our mission to pray for and minister to persons
with HIV/AIDS and other life-threatening illnesses. For the
past four years our church has sponsored "Care of Body, Mind and
Spirit: a Retreat for Persons Living with HIV/AIDS" during the
second weekend of June at Aldersgate Center in Swartswood, New Jersey.
After our most recent retreat, Pastor Jeff Edwards talked about the
weekend in a sermon the following Sunday: 'This
past weekend fifty people from places like Paterson, Jersey City, and
Newark --folks living with HIV/AIDS and their loved ones --gathered last
Friday evening in the extraordinary beauty that is Camp Aldersgate
--folks living in, or close to, poverty - generally unable to work
--coping with the stress of chronic illness --folks who don't get much
opportunity to be away from the noise and chaos of cities. For some
reason the vast majority of these fifty people were women --women living
alone --women caring for children and grandchildren --even as they coped
with their own illness. Those of
us there from our church pulled out all the stops in order to show these
folks a good time. On
Friday evening as people were settling in there were ice cream sundaes
with every kind of topping imaginable. On Saturday Lois Pongo and six
other massage therapists came up and gave everybody a leisurely, deeply
relaxing massage. Oh, how they liked that. Fred Schlosshauer came up and
put on one of his dazzling magic shows to the delight of many. There
were crafts to do for those who didn't feel like getting up and out, and
hikes into those beautiful woods for those who did. There was sharing
and singing and games and boat rides on the pond. There were the great
meals the Aldersgate staff served up, and a birthday cake for a ten year
old boy
named David. Robbie Furman the balloon sculptor extraordinaire came up and made
extraordinary balloon sculptures for everybody. In the
evening "Reconstruction" came up and played music at this
moving worship service Aldersgate's magnificent chapel, at the
conclusion of which each person was given this glowing, white helium
balloon which represented their spiritual selves --their life in Christ
--and one by one each person was invited to come forward to the altar,
releasing his or her balloon to rise up and be a part of a great cloud
of faithful witnesses. At the end of the day there was a campfire up and marshmallow roast out on the field under a billion sparkling stars --more stars than you ever get to see in the city.
|
|
Retreat 2001 - Time to Talk
|
|
All of
this was free of charge, because folks from our church had done fund
raising in the past year. Sharon Adam Carol Hauessler and others had
gone to the local PAL building every Tuesday night for months to sell
dinners there to raise money so that these folks would be able to come on
this retreat, because otherwise they wouldn't be able to afford it. Sunday
morning, while you were having church here, we had church up there, a
final communion service in that beautiful, light filled chapel, and people
were given the opportunity to share what the weekend had meant to them. They
said a lot of beautiful things --such as how they weekend had been so very
relaxing for them, how it had helped them to re-connect with God. But
there were two things stand out in my memory that was shared there. One
woman said, "The hugs were the best part; I don't generally get many
hugs." Human touch matters more than we know. And
another woman summed the weekend up by saying, "It made me feel...
special." This beautiful, young woman from Newark who had earlier
shared how after her diagnosis she had reached out to God and found the
strength to step free of her drug addiction, but how hard it was day by
day. As she spoke now she had this dreamy, contented look on her face as
she repeated the words: "It made me feel... special;" like the
weekend had been a big birthday party for her, and everybody had
remembered to get her a present. The
Gospel reading for this Sunday (Luke 7:36-8:3) called to mind for me the
events of the weekend and the comments of these women. The
setting was what you would call a "dinner party" --Jesus has
been invited to the house of a pharisee --and yet to call it a dinner
party is highly misleading. The kinds of parties that Jesus likes are the
kind where there's always room in the circle --where everybody's welcome
and everybody is made to feel special --but that definitely was not the
case here. It was an "invitation only" party, and Jesus had
evidently been invited not as an act of friendship but because the
pharisees wanted to check him out --evaluate this teacher who has been
making such a buzz lately --to find, perhaps, some way to criticize him
--cut him down to size. Not really the atmosphere you associate with
a "party." The host definitely did not pullout all the
stops to make Jesus feel welcome --in fact he seems to have intentionally
neglected the standard practices of hospitality. As
the story goes on we find out that the host hadn't offered Jesus the
customary water with which to bathe his feet, which would be a little like
having a guest come to your home with coat on and not offering to take it
from them. Nor does he give his guest a kiss; also a standard expression
in those days of warmth and hospitality. At
this point Luke tells us that a "woman in the city who was a
sinner" crashes the party. She has no invitation, and she definitely
is not welcome there, by anyone, that is, other than Jesus. Now
the extraordinary thing here is that this woman with a bad reputation
proceeds to make Jesus feel special in a way the host should have but
didn't. Jesus
is lying down, reclined at the table, his feet sticking out behind him,
and this woman comes up and begins to
bathe his feet with her tears, wiping them dry with her hair. She then
proceeds to kiss his feet, and then anoint them with this expensive,
fragrant ointment she has brought with her for this purpose. In
a word, she makes Jesus feel special. She does this, of course,
because he has made her feel special; she
has sensed his love and acceptance in contrast to the cold heartedness of
others who have made her feel unlovable and rejected. Jesus welcomes her
lavishly, loving touch. Wherever the
spirit of Christ is, there is a "no condemnation zone." This is
not because we have never done anything worthy of condemnation --we all
have done things worthy of condemnation --but because we are all saved by
his wondrous grace. It is our calling as those who follow in the name of
Jesus to love in such a manner that others might glimpse something of the
lavish love with which the Creator of the Universe holds us, especially
when the world seems to go out of its way to tell folks they're unlovable. ' For more
information regarding our annual retreat, please call Dominick Pesqueara
at work 1 800 879 2679 ext. 102.
|
