Mark Scandrette

On Monday night our family went to a pre release screening of the rockumentary, Call + Response, produced and directed by my friend, Justin Dillon. This film provides a disturbing portrait of the issue of Human trafficking and a compelling vision of what ordinary people can do to end modern day slavery. Songs by talented musicians are interwoven seamlessly with interviews with experts and celebrity activists. The film is worth watching just to see Cornell West throw down about love, justice, the blues and the funk. Ultimately Call + Response offers a hopeful vision for how all of us can be a part of the movement to bring freedom to the 27 million people currently enslaved globally.

This weekend, twenty of us went to the Dixon’s cabin for a SEVEN retreat. It was four years ago this month that we began as a community. And this place, up in the Santa Cruz mountains, holds many memories of our dreams and history together. In the first year, once a month we took a twenty-four hour “sabbath retreat” to relax and talk about vows and a common rhythm of life. What impressed me this weekend was how many new faces are now part of the “we” that is our community. The hard work of creating a shared identity and values is now benefiting others.

To rise in hope
And lie down in peace

To carry my portion of the work of creation
Leaving what is left unmade for another day

To be tender with my wife
Cherishing and beholding her ageless beauty

To guide my children with words and actions
Listening with wonder to all they discover

To exercise my body,
feeling the pleasure of movement, wind, speed and agility

To taste the best of what the earth produces
taking only what is needed for energy, health and longevity

To greet my neighbor with an open heart and open arms
Speaking and choosing what is good and healing

To be awake to the divine presence in all things
Dancing in delicate surrender to ancient dreams

Doug Pagitt, Tony Jones and I each documented the shaving of our revivalist facial hair for posterity.  My son, Isaiah, saved the preacher’s gray scraggly beard clippings in a glass jar he labeled, A.L. Withee, 2008. See the video here. I know the posting of this is a bit delayed, but I am something of a luddite.

On Friday Hailey and I returned from San Salvador. We had an amazing time visiting projects sites of Compassion International and meeting children and doing home visits. We were very impressed with the work of their in-country staff and volunteers. In a rapidly accelerating global economy many people are being left behind– a disproportunate amount of our brothers and sisters in developing countries like El Salvador.

Our family sponsors Jeheira, a beautiful 6 year-old girl who is living in Santa Ana, El Salvador (pictured with Hailey, right). She lives just a few hundred yards from a shiny Toyota dealership– but a world a way in terms of standards of living. Jeheira’s family makes their home just above a filthy creek bed and her corrigated tin house is built into the wall of an ajoining neighborhood. Seven people share a one room hut with slanted dirt floors. The home smells fowl but is neat and contains the families few possessions. Jeheira’s father was murdered on a public bus by gang members when she was one year old. Through various odd jobs her family makes approximately $2 a day. Food costs and currency rates are the same as the United States– so her family has approximately 25 cents per person per day to spend on food. What shocked me the most was where they get their water– from the filthy creek we crossed to get to Jeheira’s house– full of paint cans, garbage and sewage. We were told that if we drank the water the family uses, it would probably kill us– but because their bodies are used to the levels of toxins and bacteria, Jeheira’s family is able to drink this water without getting sick (though I wonder what is does to their long term health).

The work of Compassion International projects in these neighborhoods provides children like Jeheira with access to education, nutrition and health care, socio-emotional support and spiritual nurturing that help her to have hope and an imagination for a better way of life.

On the way back from Jeheira’s house we walked past many teenage boys standing around aimlessly on the street. Many of these boys will be led into gangs by the lack of opportunity and positive male role models. Often these gangs prey on teenage girls– kidnapping and raping them as a gang rite of passage. I was told that in El Salvador 80% of girls are sexually abused by age 12. Its sad for me to think about the challenges Jeheira faces in her life– but I’m glad that our family can write to her, pray for her and give towards her education, well-being and sense of confidence and dignity.

I’m still processing what we saw on this trip. So many juxtapostions. People living in severe poverty who are so generous and happy. Guns and smiles on children’s faces everywhere. Our future is the children of this world– the good dreams of God belong to them– and they are worthy of our attention and conscious about how we live in this complex global economy– where the rich prosper and the poor suffer.